Este artículo está motivado por el problema de la responsabilidad colectiva frente a las acciones cometidas por nuestros antepasados y por la pregunta acerca de la legitimidad de las demandas de perdón. Acudiendo al universo conceptual heredado de Hannah Arendt, en este texto se aboga por el ejercicio de la capacidad de juicio como detonante tanto de la demanda de perdón como de la responsabilidad colectiva. El perdón se presenta así no solo como una categoría moral sino fundamentalmente política, imprescindible (...) para reconciliarse con lo acontecido y mirar al futuro con esperanza. (shrink)

Are there nonexistent objects, i.e., objects that do not exist? Some examples often cited are: Zeus, Pegasus, Sherlock Holmes, Vulcan (the hypothetical planet postulated by the 19th century astronomer Le Verrier), the perpetual motion machine, the golden mountain, the fountain of youth, the round square, etc. Some important philosophers have thought that the very concept of a nonexistent object is contradictory (Hume) or logically ill-formed (Kant, Frege), while others (Leibniz, Meinong, the Russell of Principles of Mathematics) have embraced it wholeheartedly. (...) This entry is an examination of the many questions which arise in connection with the view that there are nonexistent objects. The following are particularly salient: What reasons are there (if any) for thinking that there are nonexistent objects? If there are nonexistent objects, then what kind of objects are they? How can they be characterized? Is it possible to provide a consistent theory of nonexistent objects? What is the explanatory force of a consistent theory of nonexistent objects (if such a thing is possible)? (shrink)

This article considers aspects of a development aid that provides medical support to strengthen pediatric orthopedics in Rwanda. We present part of the Afriquia foundation work, a nonprofit foundation from Poland involved in supporting the medical sector in Rwanda as a sign of global solidarity and the human right to health. The main foundation's activity is the treatment of orthopedic problems among Rwandan citizens. We present a case study of two children under the care of the Afiquia foundation. 11‐year‐old Seraphine (...) treated due to the consequences of right tibia osteomyelitis and 11‐year‐old Lavi suffering from osteogenesis imperfecta. Both children were treated surgically in Poland due to Rwanda's lack of treatment possibilities. After the applied treatment, Seraphine walks correctly without crutches and can attend school and thrive among her peers. Lavi has not sustained any fragility fracture since the surgery in Poland. He is healthy and constantly ongoing his rehabilitation including gait training. The described cases initiated development aid in Rwanda, supplying hospitals with orthopedic implants and training medical staff. The growing number of humanitarian crises across the globe and the people affected requires increasing organizations involved in providing relief. The emphasis should be on global education, aiming to make the recipients reflect and prepare them to face humanitarian crises. (shrink)

In the past thirty years or so, the doctrine that actions are events has become an essential, and sometimes unargued, part of the received view in the philosophy of action, despite the efforts of a few philosophers to undermine the consensus. For example, the entry for Agency in a recently published reference guide to the philosophy of mind begins with the following sentence: A central task in the philosophy of action is that of spelling out the differences between events in (...) general and those events that fall squarely into the category of human action. There is no consensus about what events are. But it is generally agreed that, whatever events may prove to be, actions are a species or a class of events. We believe that the received view is mistaken: actions are not events. We concede that for most purposes, the kind of categorial refinement which is involved in either affirming or denying that actions are events is frankly otiose. Our common idiom does not stress the difference between actions and events, at least not in general terms, because it has no need to. Perhaps it sounds a little odd to say that some events are performed; but if we balked at describing, say, the abdication of Edward VIII as one of the politically significant events in Britain in 1936, it could not be for metaphysical reasons. And since actions, like events, are datable — though often, as we shall see, only imprecisely — actions are said to take place and to occur. But an important class of actions consist in moving something; indeed, according to many philosophers, every action consists in moving something. And when we consider actions of this sort from a theoretical point of view it becomes imperative to distinguish between actions and events. Or so we shall argue. (shrink)

Se aborda, desde una perspectiva evolucionista, el papel desempeñado por el "asco moralizado", entendido como repulsión emocional ante individuos y prácticas sociales que consideramos objeto de evaluación moral. Se parte de un análisis general de la emoción de asco y sus desencadenantes. A continuación, se abordan dos posiciones opuestas en relación con la confiabilidad y valor instrumental del asco para promover juicios morales "adecuados" e incitar a la acción moral. Se propone una reinterpretación del problema desde un enfoque evolucionista, procurando (...) correlacionar los diversos juicios de valor que puede promover el asco moralizado, con diferentes estrategias adaptativas. Finalmente, se correlacionan tales estrategias con posiciones morales liberales y conservadoras. The article addresses the role played by "moralized revulsion", understood as the emotional disgust we feel against individuals and social practices that we deem to be the object of moral evaluation, from an evolutionist perspective. The first part provides a general analysis of the emotion of revulsion and its triggers. Then, the paper discusses two opposing positions regarding the reliability and instrumental value of revulsion in promoting "adequate" moral judgments and inciting to moral action. It then proposes a reinterpretation of the problem from an evolutionist perspective, attempting to correlate the diverse value judgments promoted by moralized revulsion with different adaptive strategies. Finally, it correlates those strategies with liberal and conservative moral positions. Este artigo pretende abordar, sob uma perspectiva evolucionista, o papel desempenhado pelo "nojo moralizado", entendido como repulsão emocional ante indivíduos e práticas sociais que consideramos objeto de avaliação moral. Parte-se de uma análise geral da emoção de nojo e seus desencadeantes. A seguir, abordam-se duas posições opostas em relação com a confiabilidade e valor instrumental do nojo para promover juízos morais "adequados" e incitar a ação moral. Propõese uma reinterpretação do problema a partir de um enfoque evolucionista, o qual procura correlacionar os diversos juízos de valor que o nojo moralizado pode promover, com diferentes estratégias adaptativas. Finalmente, correlacionam-se essas estratégias com posições morais liberais e conservadoras. (shrink)

In this Chapter, Maria Kronfeldner discusses whether psychological essentialism is a necessary part of dehumanization. This involves different elements of essentialism, and a narrow and a broad way of conceptualizing psychological essentialism, the first akin to natural kind thinking, the second based on entitativity. She first presents authors that have connected essentialism with dehumanization. She then introduces the error theory of psychological essentialism regarding the category of the human, and distinguishes different elements of psychological essentialism. On that basis, Kronfeldner (...) connects historical, socio-psychological, and philosophical insights in order to show that although essentialism can act as a catalyst for dehumanization, it is not necessary for it. Examples relate to dehumanization in the context of colonialism and evolutionary thinking, to the history of dehumanizing women from Aristotle to 19th-century craniology, and to contemporary self-dehumanization and ‘lesser mind’ attribution. (shrink)

A Philosophy to Live By highlights Murdoch's distinctive conception of philosophy as a spiritual or existential practice and enlists the resources of her thought to explore a wide range of thinkers and debates at the intersections of moral philosophy, religion, art, and politics.

Maria Kronfeldner’s Preface and Introduction to the Routledge Handbook of Dehumanization maps the landscape of dehumanization studies. She starts with a brief portrayal of the history of the field. The systematically minded sections that follow guide the reader through the resulting rugged landscape represented in the Handbook’s contributions. Different realizations, levels, forms, and ontological contrasts of dehumanization are distinguished, followed by remarks on the variety of targets of dehumanization. A discussion on valence and emotional aspects is added. Causes, functions, (...) and consequences of dehumanization, and the prospects for reducing or undoing it, are introduced. The systematic overview closes with a discussion of some important theoretical complexities that arise in studying dehumanization. After these systematic sections, the scholarly work on dehumanization gets situated in the broader intellectual landscape of debates about the ‘human’ in the humanities and social sciences. The Introduction ends with some notes on scope, limitations, and intended readership of the Handbook. (shrink)

Relativism, an ancient philosophical doctrine, is once again a topic of heated debate. In this book, Maria Baghramian and Annalisa Coliva present the recent arguments for and against various forms of relativism. -/- The first two chapters introduce the conceptual and historical contours of relativism. These are followed by critical investigations of relativism about truth, conceptual relativism, epistemic relativism, and moral relativism. The concluding chapter asks whether it is possible to make sense of relativism as a philosophical thesis. -/- (...) The book introduces readers to the main types of relativism and the arguments in their favor. It also goes beyond the expository material to engage in more detailed critical responses to the key positions and authors under discussion. -/- Including chapter summaries, suggestions for further reading, and a glossary, Relativism is essential reading for students of philosophy as well as those in related disciplines where relativism is studied, such as anthropology, sociology, and politics. (shrink)

Continuing Franz Boas' work to establish anthropology as an academic discipline in the US at the turn of the twentieth century, Alfred L. Kroeber re-defined culture as a phenomenon sui generis. To achieve this he asked geneticists to enter into a coalition against hereditarian thoughts prevalent at that time in the US. The goal was to create space for anthropology as a separate discipline within academia, distinct from other disciplines. To this end he crossed the boundary separating anthropology from biology (...) in order to secure the boundary. His notion of culture, closely bound to the concept of heredity, saw it as independent of biological heredity (culture as superorganic) but at the same time as a heredity of another sort. The paper intends to summarise the shifting boundaries of anthropology at the beginning of the twentieth century, and to present Kroeber?s ideas on culture, with a focus on how the changing landscape of concepts of heredity influenced his views. The historical case serves to illustrate two general conclusions: that the concept of culture played and plays different roles in explaining human existence; that genetics and the concept of Weismannian hard inheritance did not have an unambiguous unidirectional historical effect on the vogue for hereditarianism at that time; on the contrary, it helped to establish culture in Kroeber's sense, culture as independent of heredity. (shrink)

All the available evidence suggests that companies which are run with a view to the long term interests of their key stakeholders are more likely to prosper than those which take a short term, "shareholder first" approach. Indeed it is the central premise of this article that forces of economic globalisation and developments in the technology of mass communication will make stakeholder inclusion an increasingly essential component of corporate strategy in the 21st century. Put simply, companies, like governments and other (...) established institutions, need to listen, to process and to respond positively to the values and beliefs of their stakeholders – most especially their customers, employees and investors. Failure to do this will reduce competitiveness and increase the risk of corporate demise. (shrink)

The article addresses the question whether culture evolves in a Lamarckian manner. I highlight three central aspects of a Lamarckian concept of evolution: the inheritance of acquired characteristics, the transformational pattern of evolution, and the concept of directed changes. A clear exposition of these aspects shows that a system can be a Darwinian variational system instead of a Lamarckian transformational one, even if it is based on inheritance of acquired characteristics and/or on Lamarckian directed changes. On this basis, I apply (...) the three aspects to culture. Taking for granted that culture is a variational system, based on selection processes, I discuss in detail the senses in which cultural inheritance can be said to be Lamarckian and in which sense problem solving, a major factor in cultural change, leads to directed variation. (shrink)

Two conceptions of motivating reasons, i.e. the reasons for which we act, can be found in the literature: (1) the dominant 'psychological conception', which says that motivating reasons are an agent's believing something; and (2) the 'non-psychological' conception, the minority view, which says that they are what the agent believes, i.e. his beliefs. In this paper I outline a version of the minority view, and defend it against what have been thought to be insuperable difficulties - in particular, difficulties concerning (...) 'error cases' (cases where what the agent believes is false); and difficulties concerning the explanation of action. Concerning error cases, I argue that if we are motivated by something believed that is true, what motivates us to act is a motivating reason. By contrast, if we are motivated by something believed that is false, then what motivates us to act is merely an apparent motivating reason. Either way, what motivates us is, as the non-psychological conception says, what we believe and not our believing it. I offer an account of the relation between motivating reasons and the explanation of action, and argue that this account helps bring out two important points. One is that the fact that we often do, and indeed sometimes must, use explanations such as 'He did it because he believed that p' does not vindicate the psychological conception of motivating reasons. The other is that endorsing the non-psychological conception of motivating reasons does not commit one to a non-factive view of explanations of action. (shrink)

Throughout his long intellectual life, Leibniz penned his reflections on Christian theology, yet this wealth of material has never been systematically gathered or studied. This book addresses an important and central aspect of these neglected materials—Leibniz’s writings on two mysteries central to Christian thought, the Trinity and the Incarnation. -/- From Antognazza’s study emerges a portrait of a thinker surprisingly receptive to traditional Christian theology and profoundly committed to defending the legitimacy of truths beyond the full grasp of human reason. (...) This view of Leibniz differs strikingly from traditional perceptions of the philosopher as a “hard” rationalist and quasi-deist. Antognazza also sets Leibniz’s writings in the context of the important theological controversies of his day. (shrink)

According to Donald Davidson, the very idea of a conceptual scheme is the third dogma of empiricism. In this paper I examine the ways in which this claim may be interpreted. I conclude by arguing that there remains an innocent version of the scheme -content distinction which is not motivated by empiricism and does not commit us to the pernicious type of dualism that Davidson rejects.

This work presents an analysis of the feeling of guilt and in particular of the cognitive defenses against it. It shows how the need to avoid or mitigate the feeling, with the suffering implied, affects the perception and judgment of oneself and others. It is in fact claimed that to copy with their guilt people try to alter the appraisal processes implied by the emotion. Once described the main cognitive components of the feeling of guilt, an analysis is offered of (...) the interventions of the cognitive defenses on such components, to alter the original appraisal processes underlying the feeling. (shrink)

Although no scholarly consensus exists on the issue, the claim that a substantive reconfiguration of the Internet has occurred in the beginning of the 2000s has settled firmly in public common sense. The label tentatively chosen for the new turn in the medium’s evolution is Web 2.0. The developments constituting this turn have been contemplated from different perspectives in technical and business publications (O’Reilly 2005), in treatises on convergence or participatory culture (Jenkins 2006; Jenkins et al. 2009), and could be (...) usefully interrogated by means of political economy concepts such as the social factory and free labor (Terranova 2004). Marked, or rather symbolically constructed, by these discursive pickets lies a field of practice that the members of the participatory culture, the produsers (Bruns 2008) of open journalism, blogs, social networking sites and other characteristic Web 2.0 applications inhabit and animate with their everyday thought, decision making and action. This paper undertakes a theoretical exploration of the user practices emerging and consolidating around the new technological and organizational models making up Web 2.0. It is informed by a qualitative study of bloggers and Facebook users conducted through focus group methodology, although the concrete empirical data are not presented here. Rather, the analysis employs the concept of technologies of the self by Foucault (1988) as a heuristic device in order to situate Web 2.0 use, first, in a long history of culturally evolved forms of self-constitution and, second, in a complex matrix of relationships with other types of technologies, namely, those of production, sign systems and power. This conceptual choice, we argue, furnishes a study of Web 2.0 use, which holds in balance its liberatory potential and its susceptibility to new forms of domination, rationalization and commodification. (shrink)

It is commonly accepted that people can, and regularly do, deceive themselves. Yet closer examination reveals a set of conceptual puzzles that make self-deception difficult to explain. Applying the conditions for other-deception to self-deception generates what are known as the ‘paradoxes’ of belief and intention. Simply put, the central problem is how it is possible for me to believe one thing, and yet intentionally cause myself to simultaneously believe its contradiction. There are two general approaches taken by philosophers to account (...) for these puzzles about the self-deceptive state and the process of self-deception. ‘Partitioning’ strategies try to resolve the paradoxes by proposing that the mind is divided in some way that allows self-deception to occur. ‘Reformulation’ strategies suggest that the conditions we use to define self-deception should be modified so that the paradoxes do not arise at all. Both approaches are subject to criticism about the consequences of the strategies philosophers use, but recent cross-disciplinary analyses of self-deception may help shed light on the puzzles that underlie this phenomenon. (shrink)

Hilary Putnam is one of the world’s leading philosophers. His highly original and often provocative ideas have set the agenda for a variety of debates in philosophy of science, philosophy of mind and philosophy of language. His now famous philosophical thought experiments, such as the ‘Twin earth’ and ‘the brains in the vat’ have become part of the established canon in philosophy and cognitive science. _Reading Putnam_ is an outstanding overview and assessment of Hilary Putnam’s work by a team of (...) international contributors, and includes replies by Putnam himself. Divided into clear sections, it contains chapters on key aspects of Putnam’s large body of writing, including: Scientific realism and the changes that Putnam’s thought has undergone on this topic analyticity and ontology, including the important interconnections between the views of Putnam and Quine Putnam’s arguments concerning externalist views of meaning and reference, questions of conceptual relativity, and his preoccupation with ethics through a denial of the fact–value dichotomy Putnam’s developing views on perception. Offering an excellent survey of Putnam’s work, _Reading Putnam_ is essential for those studying philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, and philosophy of science, as well as for anyone interested in contemporary philosophy. (shrink)

In this article we aim to reconstruct some aspects of Davidson's idea of triangulation, and against this reconstruction, ask whether the idea is viciously circular. We begin by looking at the claim that without a triangularn setting, there is no saying what the cause of a being's responses is. In the first section we discuss the notion of relevant similarity, and what difference the presence of a second non‐linguistic being could make for the individuation of a common focus of attention. (...) In the second section we look at the role of a second person in language‐acquisition. It is important that being corrected to ‘go on as others do’ does not yet presuppose thought, and similarity standards can be applied to a learner's reactions even before she is aware of these standards. We also show why Davidson is not committed to any consensus view of correctness. In the last section we discern three charges of circularity that can be levelled against the idea of triangulation. We argue that Davidson can respond to the first two charges, and point to a way of answering the third. But the response we propound raises a new question, namely, why does the second being have to be a speaker or thinker even before the learner is aware of the three points of the triangle? (shrink)

Concealed questions are determiner phrases that are naturally paraphrased as embedded questions (e.g., John knows the capital of Italy ≈ John knows what the capital of Italy is). This paper offers a novel account of the interpretation of concealed questions, which assumes that an entity-denoting expression α may be type-shifted into an expression ?z.P(α), where P is a contextually determined property, and z ranges over a contextually determined domain of individual concepts. Different resolutions of P and the domain of z (...) yield a wide range of concealed question interpretations, some of which were not noted previously. On the other hand, principled constraints on the resolution process prevent overgeneration. (shrink)

This article discusses pragmatic aspects of our interpretation of intensional constructions like questions and prepositional attitude reports. In the first part, it argues that our evaluation of these constructions may vary relative to the identification methods operative in the context of use. This insight is then given a precise formalization in a possible world semantics. In the second part, an account of actual evaluations of questions and attitudes is proposed in the framework of bi-directional optimality theory. Pragmatic meaning selections are (...) explained as the result of specific rankings of potentially conflicting generation and interpretation constraints. (shrink)

The relationship between aesthetic value and other moral and cognitive values has been a key theme within contemporary aesthetic discussion. In this article, I explore once again the implications of this relationship, but from what I think might be a different angle. With few exceptions, notably Dominic Lopes, most of the contributions to this issue have dealt with the impact that moral or cognitive values could possibly have on the overall aesthetic value of a work of art. In this article, (...) I explore instead how aesthetic properties or merits could play a role in explaining moral and cognitive properties. To do so, I first offer some examples that I think may reasonably exemplify the phenomenon we are considering. Second, I argue that a proper account of interactionism should meet at least two constraints: the relevance constraint and the autonomy constraint. Finally, I try to clarify how it is possible that aesthetic properties substantially contribute to other values by appealing to the notions of expression and the affective character of aesthetic properties. (shrink)

This volume breaks new grounds by bringing together a great variety of innovative contributions on triangulation, epistemology, and mind. The notion of triangulation, developed by Donald Davidson during the last two decades of his life, has changed our understanding of the relationship between subjective, intersubjective, and objective, and shed new light on concepts such as externalism, internalism, communication, interpretation, and language. At the same time, however, it has been strongly criticized for several aspects. The papers collected in this volume written (...) by established contributors aim to provide new insights into the contemporary debate on triangulation. The upshot is not only a deeper understanding of Davidson s ideas but also a new appreciation of some central problems of epistemology and the philosophy of mind with regard to adjoining disciplines such as, for instance, cognitive sciences and the philosophy of language.". (shrink)

The present work attempts to evaluate in what manner the Marian virtues marked out throughout the Middle Ages with respect to women, contribute powerfully to the dignification of women and their redemption from the traditional accusations that they are a perverting influence on humanity.

La modernidad es el escenario en el que se desarrolla con mayor fuerza el proceso emancipador de las mujeres, verdaderas resistentes, pioneras el la lucha por hacer el planeta más equitativo y habitable. Ellas anticipan muchos de los valores del actual pensamiento transmoderno, valores que, denominados tradicionalmente "femeninos", hablan de la no violencia, del cuidado de la naturaleza y de lo pequeño, de la comunicación� y se han convertido en propuestas morales que alcanzan a hombres y mujeres para la construcción (...) de un planeta más equilibrado ecológica y socialmente. (shrink)

Se reconstruyen en este artículo las familias Banū l-Ṭaylasān, Banū l-Šarrāṭ y Banū Ayyaš y se estudian las relaciones de parentesco establecidas entre ellas mediante una estrategia de alianzas matrimoniales diseñada por Abū l-Qāsim al-Šarrāṭ. Se aprecia cómo estos lazos familiares van estrechamente unidos a las relaciones de transmisión del saber, especialmente hadiz y ciencias coránicas. Se analizan asimismo las nisbas anṣāríes, posiblemente adoptadas tardíamente, que exhiben todos ellos.