This study aims to evaluate the impact of an educational intervention on social competence and social acceptance among adolescents. The participants were 106 adolescents aged 12-15 years (M = 13.41 years; SD = 0.81 years). Participants were randomly assigned to the control group (n = 44) and an experimental group (n = 69). In the experimental group, an intervention based on the Sport Education Model (SEM) was applied. While in the control group, an intervention based on the Traditional Model of (...) Direct Instruction (TM-DI) was carried out. An experimental design with repeated pretest and posttest measurements was developed. The Adolescent Multidimensional Social Competence Questionnaire (AMSC-Q) was used to assess social competence. The Guess Who (GW4) questionnaire was used to assess social acceptance (SA) among peers. The preliminary results obtained in this investigation showed that the intervention based on the SEM (experimental group) promoted greater improvements in some indicators of social competence and social acceptance among peers than those obtained with the TM-DI (control group). Furthermore, the results confirm a similar impact of the intervention between boys and girls. It is also relevant to note that these findings highlight the efficacy, feasibility, and suitability of this educational intervention with adolescents. (shrink)

Do we have positive duties to help others in need or are our moral duties only negative, focused on not harming them? Are any of the former positive duties, duties of justice that respond to enforceable rights? Is their scope global? Should we aim for global equality besides the eradication of severe global poverty? Is a humanist approach to egalitarian distribution based on rights that all human beings as such have defensible, or must egalitarian distribution be seen in an associativist (...) way, as tracking existing frameworks such as statehood and economic interdependence? Are the eradication of global poverty and the achievement of global equality practically feasible or are they hopelessly utopian wishes? -/- This book argues that there are basic positive duties of justice to help eradicate severe global poverty; that global egalitarian principles are also reasonable even if they cannot be fully realized in the short term; and that there are dynamic duties to enhance the feasibility of the transition from global poverty to global equality in the face of nonideal circumstances such as the absence of robust international institutions and the lack of a strong ethos of cosmopolitan solidarity. The very notion of feasibility is crucial for normative reasoning, but has received little explicit philosophical discussion. This book offers a systematic exploration of that concept as well as of its application to global justice. It also arbitrates the current debate between humanist and associativist accounts of the scope of distributive justice. Drawing on moral contractualism (the view that we ought to follow the principles that no one could reasonably reject), this book provides a novel defense of humanism, challenges several versions of associativism (which remains the most popular view among political philosophers), and seeks to integrate the insights underlying both views. (shrink)

The concept of mental privacy can be defined as the principle that subjects should have control over the access to their own neural data and to the information about the mental processes and states that can be obtained by analyzing it. Our aim is to contribute to the current debate on mental privacy by identifying the main positions, articulating key assumptions and addressing central arguments. First, we map the different positions found in current literature. We distinguish between those who dismiss (...) concerns about mental privacy and those who endorse them. In this latter group, we establish a further disagreement between conservative and liberal strategies to protect mental privacy. Then, we address the first discussion by articulating and criticizing different skeptical views on mental privacy. Finally, we try to identify what are the unique features of neural data and examine how they may be connected to the ways in which neurotechnological mindreading could put mental privacy at risk. We suggest that even if neural data is unique, it may not require new strategies to protect people from its misuse. However, identifying the special features and risks of neurotechnological mind-reading is necessary for the second discussion on mental privacy to properly take off. (shrink)

Most research studying the corporate social performance –corporate financial performance link has utilized developed country samples. Also, this literature has generally focused on a wide variety of industries, ignoring the fact that certain sectors – such as controversial industries – have graver social and environmental issues. Hence, a gap exists in this tradition when it comes to emerging markets and controversial industries. This paper attempts to fill this void by providing preliminary evidence and insight on the matter. Based on an (...) exploration in six Latin American countries and five controversial industries, we find a negative bidirectional association between CSP and CFP. These results tend to contradict the mainstream conclusion of a positive bidirectional link, suggesting that institutional and market-level forces play a major role in shaping this relationship. (shrink)

Este ensayo parte de una experiencia disruptiva en un aula de bachillerato de un instituto español. En el transcurso de una clase ordinaria de filosofía, un incidente inesperado rompe la definición de la situación, haciendo añicos el consenso de trabajo entre los alumnos y el profesor. Para reconstruir su trasfondo de expectativas, los alumnos se ven forzados a emplear estrategias de acomodación y normalización. En el análisis de esta experiencia disruptiva convergen la fenomenología del mundo social de Alfred Schütz, la (...) etnometodología de Harold Garfinkel y el interaccionismo simbólico de Erving Goffman.This essay starts from a disruptive experience in a Spanish high school classroom. In the course of an ordinary philosophy lesson, an unexpected incident breaks the definition of the situation, smashing the working consensus among students and teacher to smithereens. In order to rebuild their background expectancies, the pupils are forced to resort to accommodation and normalization strategies. The analysis of this disruptive experience is based upon the convergence of Alfred Schütz’s phenomenology of the social world, Harold Garfinkel’s ethnomethodology, and Erving Goffman’s symbolic interactionism. (shrink)

Este trabajo presenta los resultados preliminares obtenidos en la conformación del Atlas Iberoamericano en Bioética que ha desarrollado el Centro Anáhuac de Desarrollo Estratégico en Bioética (CADEBI) respecto a la identificación y análisis de las instituciones de Bioética existentes en la Región. Se realizó una revisión documental a través de motores de búsqueda, bases de datos, redes sociales y otras fuentes. La información obtenida se agrupó en seis diferentes categorías de acuerdo con la estructura, objetivos y actividades que desarrollan. De (...) esta manera, se realizó un diagnóstico inicial con base en las fuentes documentales disponibles en la Web. Como parte de los resultados, se identificaron 157 instituciones en 25 países; así como la variación en la densidad institucional, concentrándose principalmente en España (29 instituciones), México (26 instituciones), Argentina (17 instituciones), Brasil (13 instituciones), Chile (11 instituciones) y Colombia (8 instituciones). Además, se resalta la importancia de las comisiones nacionales de bioética en el desarrollo institucional, señalando la relación entre el avance científico y tecnológico de los países y el desarrollo de la bioética. El texto concluye con la propuesta de crear un Observatorio de la Red Iberoamericana de Bioética para documentar y promover el intercambio institucional y científico en la Región, así como algunas recomendaciones derivadas del desarrollo de este trabajo. (shrink)

This essay explores the relation between two perspectives on the nature of human rights. According to the "political" or "practical" perspective, human rights are claims that individuals have against certain institutional structures, in particular modern states, in virtue of interests they have in contexts that include them. According to the more traditional "humanist" or "naturalistic" perspective, human rights are pre-institutional claims that individuals have against all other individuals in virtue of interests characteristic of their common humanity. This essay argues that (...) once we identify the two perspectives in their best light, we can see that they are complementary and that in fact we need both to make good normative sense of the contemporary practice of human rights. It explains how humanist and political considerations can and should work in tandem to account for the concept, content, and justification of human rights. (shrink)

What should our theorizing about social justice aim at? Many political philosophers think that a crucial goal is to identify a perfectly just society. Amartya Sen disagrees. In The Idea of Justice, he argues that the proper goal of an inquiry about justice is to undertake comparative assessments of feasible social scenarios in order to identify reforms that involve justice-enhancement, or injustice-reduction, even if the results fall short of perfect justice. Sen calls this the “comparative approach” to the theory of (...) justice. He urges its adoption on the basis of a sustained critique of the former approach, which he calls “transcendental.” In this paper I pursue two tasks, one critical and the other constructive. First, I argue that Sen’s account of the contrast between the transcendental and the comparative approaches is not convincing, and second, I suggest what I take to be a broader and more plausible account of comparative assessments of justice. The core claim is that political philosophers should not shy away from the pursuit of ambitious theories of justice (including, for example, ideal theories of perfect justice), although they should engage in careful consideration of issues of political feasibility bearing on their practical implementation. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to further develop van Fraassen’s diagnosis, expanding a previous analysis of the fundamental law of classical genetics and the status of the so-called ‘Mendel’s laws’.6 According to this diagnosis the Hardy-Weinberg law: 1) cannot be considered as axiom (or fundamental law) for classical population genetics, since it is a law that describes an equilibrium that 2) holds only under certain special conditions, and 3) only determines a subclass of models, 4) whose generalized form (and (...) fundamental law) being shading off into logical vacuity, and 5) more complex variants of the fundamental law (and of the Hardy-Weinberg law) can be “deduced” for more realistic assumptions. In order to achieve this, I will use notions of the structuralist view of theories, a version that is related to but different from that of van Fraassen’s. These are the notions of fundamental law, specialization, and special law. Having as a background a structuralist reconstruction of classical population genetics, I will show why the Hardy-Weinberg law should not be in fact considered the fundamental law of such a theory, but a special law (and not even a “terminal” specialization, i.e. a “non-terminal” specialization). (shrink)

En el texto se hace hincapié en los tenebrosos elementos sacrificiales que le ha acarreado al movimiento estudiantil perteneciente a la combativa Escuela Normal Rural de Ayotzinapa, situada en el Estado mexicano de Guerrero, dominado por el narcotráfico y un gobierno municipal que actúa en complicidad con este último. Se trata de un establecimiento que, además de formar maestros populares, se halla enrolado en las luchas sociales y políticas. A fines de 2014 fueron reprimidos brutalmente y objeto de desaparición (...) forzosa unos 43 alumnos de esa Escuela, lo cual dio lugar a una ininterrumpida protesta civil con muy diversos ribetes internos y mundiales cuyas múltiples expresiones procuran explicitarse en el trabajo. Por otra parte, se incursiona en el trasfondo ideológico que viene acompañando el devenir institucional mexicano bajo el manto del neoliberalismo -al cual el autor ha optado por reconceptuar como neuroliberalismo en distintos ensayos suyos y en colaboración. Conjuntamente, se enfoca la problemática en cuestión desde un ángulo doctrinario y existencial específico: el del necropoder y el pensamiento crítico. Entre los referentes bibliográficos principales pueden citarse desde Foucault y Mbembe a Holloway y González Casanova. The paper deals with the engagement of mexican student movement in Ayotzinapa Rural College and the repressive way that the local goverment and the narco-maffia fought against those students, with the disappearance and destruction of their bodies and cadavers, around september 2014. The case has an enormous influence in world and local public opinion, with different movilizations and artistic expressions that have a very critical reading of Mexican treatment in the field of Human Rights. Mexican and international neoliberalism, as well as bio and necropolitics, has been specially analyzed with the auxiliary tool of critical thinking. Between the theoretical authors that are close involved in these approaches, we can find Michel Foucault, Achille Mbembe, John Holloway and Pablo González Casanova. (shrink)

This paper connects the question of the rationality of voting to the question of what it is morally permissible for elected representatives to do. In particular, the paper argues that it is rational to vote to increase the strength of the manifest normative mandate of one's favored candidate. I argue that, due to norms of political legitimacy, how representatives ought to act while in office is tied to how much support they have from their constituents, where a representative’s “support” is (...) a function of the percentage of adults living in the political jurisdiction who voted for her. In a representative system, whether a particular law or policy is legitimate is in part a function of how much support the particular representative government has, rather than simply being a function of the governmental structure or the normative content of the law or policy. Representatives with more support can permissibly act more like trustees (doing what they think is best) and less like delegates (doing what their constituents presently prefer). I argue that this fact provides a reason for individuals to vote, even given the incredibly small chance an individual voter has of casting a pivotal vote. (shrink)

Do we have positive duties to help others in need or are our moral duties only negative, focused on not harming them? If these positive duties exist, are they strong and strict demands or are they weak and discretionary? Can we say that at least some positive duties of assistance are also duties of justice worthy of institutionalization and coercive enforcement by legal institutions? Can the scope of some of such duties be cosmopolitan or should all of them be circumscribed (...) to what we owe to our compatriots? This paper addresses these questions from a Kantian perspective, and argues that Kant’s practical philosophy provides sufficient resources to develop and defend the claim that there are basic positive duties of justice, some of which have a global scope. (shrink)

To be justifiable, the demands of a conception of human rights and global justice must be such that (a) they focus on the protection of important human interests, and (b) their fulfilment is feasible. I discuss the feasibility condition. I present a general account of the relation between moral desirability, feasibility and obligation within a conception of justice. I analyse feasibility, a complex idea including different types, domains and degrees. It is possible to respond in various ways if the fulfilment (...) of basic socioeconomic human rights against severe poverty seems at first to be infeasible. (shrink)

En este texto se aborda el vínculo entre la estructura narrativa de la memoria colectiva (Halbwachs, 2004b) y la dimensión hermenéutica de la ciudadanía (Valderrama, 2010), desde los hallazgos de la investigación denominada Configuraciones de memoria colectiva en participantes del Programa Prensa Escuela entre 2015 y 2019. Para estos efectos, se aplicó una metodología cualitativa, de diseño de revisión documental, y se analizaron los textos de jóvenes, recopilados en la publicación anual El Taller. Se identificó que los temas desarrollados en (...) las narraciones en los cuales se vincula la memoria colectiva y la ciudadanía son identidad y territorio, marcos comunes de pensamiento y reconstrucción del pasado. De esta manera, la narración facilita el reconocimiento de la realidad y sus problemáticas, toda vez que los jóvenes asistentes al Programa podían expresar su percepción del mundo, confrontar elementos de su entorno y darle lugar al otro. Estos textos adquieren resonancia en cuanto entra la hermenéutica a tender puentes para la comprensión del mundo y en el caso de la ciudadanía para la construcción de nuevos modos de convivir. (shrink)

A commitment to ‘making’—creating or producing things—can shape scientific and technological fields in important ways. This article demonstrates this by exploring synthetic biology, a field committed to making use of advanced techniques from molecular biology in order to make with living matter. I describe and analyse how this field’s ‘drive to make’ shapes its organisational, methodological, epistemological, and ontological character. Synthetic biologists’ ambition to make helps determine how their field demarcates itself, sets appropriate methods and practices, construes the purpose and (...) character of knowledge, and views the things of the living world. Using empirical data from extensive ethnographic and interview-based research, I discuss the importance of seemingly simple and unimportant commitments—in this case, a focus on the making of things rather than the production of knowledge claims. I conclude by examining the ramifications of this line of research for studies of science and technology. (shrink)

Whenever a fact P grounds another fact Q, one may ask why that is so. Karen Bennett and Louis deRosset independently argue that grounding facts—such as the fact that P grounds Q—are always grounded in their grounds-part. Bennett calls this the view that grounding is superinternal. My aim in this paper is to argue that grounding is not superinternal. I will do so by showing that superinternality, together with some widely accepted formal features of grounding—namely, transitivity and necessitation—yield implausible claims (...) about how necessities are explained. Then, I will discuss how my argument compares with Dasgupta's argument against superinternality. (shrink)

Many current problems surrounding science revolve around the complex epistemological framework that shapes a new vision of knowledge about reality. The traditional epistemological positions are characterized by the explanation of nature by means of concatenated facts; that is, as bricks attached to each other giving shape to the edifice of science. A conception of this nature showed that the idea of certainty was nothing more than a mere illusion, opening the way, on the contrary, to the idea of the uncertainty (...) of knowledge based on the descriptions of quantum physics, also a product of the non-reductionist conception of reality, thus criticizing the specular representation. This article addresses the main problems surrounding the critical conceptions that the emerging epistemology reveals about knowledge, pointing towards a much more complex vision of reality. (shrink)

In World Poverty and Human Rights, Thomas Pogge argues that the global rich have a duty to eradicate severe poverty in the world. The novelty of Pogges approach is to present this demand as stemming from basic commands which are negative rather than positive in nature: the global rich have an obligation to eradicate the radical poverty of the global poor not because of a norm of beneficence asking them to help those in need when they can at little cost (...) to themselves, but because of their having violated a principle of justice not to unduly harm others by imposing on them a coercive global order that makes their access to the objects of their human right to subsistence insecure. In this paper, I claim that although Pogge is right in arguing that negative duties are crucial in an account of global justice, he is wrong in saying that they are the only ones that are crucial. Harming the global poor by causing their poverty provides a sufficient but not a necessary condition for the global rich to have a duty of justice to assist them. After engaging in a critical analysis of Pogges argument, I conclude by suggesting the need for a robust conception of cosmopolitan solidarity that includes positive duties of assistance which are not mere duties of charity, but enforceable ones of justice. (shrink)

Deontic logic is devoted to the study of logical properties of normative predicates such as permission, obligation and prohibition. Since it is usual to apply these predicates to actions, many deontic logicians have proposed formalisms where actions and action combinators are present. Some standard action combinators are action conjunction, choice between actions and not doing a given action. These combinators resemble boolean operators, and therefore the theory of boolean algebra offers a well-known athematical framework to study the properties of the (...) classic deontic operators when applied to actions. In his seminal work, Segerberg uses constructions coming from boolean algebras to formalize the usual deontic notions. Segerberg’s work provided the initial step to understand logical properties of deontic operators when they are applied to actions. In the last years, other authors have proposed related logics. In this chapter we introduce Segerberg’s work, study related formalisms and investigate further challenges in this area. (shrink)

Concerns about threats to human autonomy feature prominently in the field of AI ethics. One aspect of this concern relates to the use of AI systems for problematically manipulative influence. In response to this, the European Union’s draft AI Act (AIA) includes a prohibition on AI systems deploying subliminal techniques that alter people’s behavior in ways that are reasonably likely to cause harm (Article 5(1)(a)). Critics have argued that the term ‘subliminal techniques’ is too narrow to capture the target cases (...) of AI-based manipulation. We propose a definition of ‘subliminal techniques’ that (a) is grounded on a plausible interpretation of the legal text; (b) addresses all or most of the underlying ethical concerns motivating the prohibition; (c) is defensible from a scientific and philosophical perspective; and (d) does not over-reach in ways that impose excessive administrative and regulatory burdens. The definition is meant to provide guidance for design teams seeking to pursue responsible and ethically aligned AI innovation. (shrink)

One of the key behavioral effects of attractiveness is increased visual attention to attractive people. This effect is often explained in terms of evolutionary adaptations, such as attractiveness being an indicator of good health. Other factors could influence this effect. In the present study, we explored the modulating role of sexual orientation on the effects of attractiveness on exploratory visual behavior. Heterosexual and homosexual men and women viewed natural-looking scenes that depicted either two women or two men who varied systematically (...) in levels of attractiveness (based on a pre-study). Participants’ eye movements and attractiveness ratings towards the faces of the depicted people were recorded. The results showed that although attractiveness had the largest influence on participants’ behaviors, participants’ sexual orientations strongly modulated the effects. With the exception of homosexual women, all participant groups looked longer and more often at attractive faces that corresponded with their sexual orientations. Interestingly, heterosexual and homosexual men and homosexual women looked longer and more often at the less attractive face of their non-preferred sex than the less attractive face of their preferred sex, evidence that less attractive faces of the preferred sex might have an aversive character. These findings provide evidence for the important role that sexual orientation plays in guiding visual exploratory behavior and evaluations of the attractiveness of others. (shrink)

Is democracy a human right? There is a growing consensus within international legal and political practice that the answer is “Yes.” However, some philosophers doubt that we should see democracy as a human right. In this paper I respond to the most systematic challenge presented so far, which was recently offered by Joshua Cohen. His challenge is directed to the view that democracy is a human right, not to the view that democracy is part of what justice demands. It is (...) instructive because it forces us to consider important questions about the nature and justification of human rights, including the putative human right to democracy. There is a tendency to see every claim of justice as a human right, and Cohen presses us to face the risk that this slip may occur in the case of democracy. Thus my aim is not simply to refute Cohen’s arguments but to engage the questions he forcefully and helpfully puts on the table. I start in section 2 by analyzing Cohen’s account of human rights. In section 3 I defend the human right to democracy against his challenge. I conclude in section 4 by articulating some reasons for the claim that democracy is a human right that mobilize and elaborate on some of Cohen’s own key premises. (shrink)

This article analyzes the main reasons offered by the literature in relation to the question of whether pre-implantation genetic diagnosis and selection should be allowed in the context of assisted reproduction techniques to avoid the birth of children with disabilities. The bioethical literature faces a challenge from the disability discourse. When the oppressive social dimension of disability is taken into account, it results in a series of questions that could challenge the most settled conclusions of the bioethical debate. However, the (...) social model has not been without criticism and one of them, the underestimation of the importance of biological traits origin against a disability of social origin, resonates particularly in the debate on preimplantation genetic selection. (shrink)

Self-control is deemed crucial for reasons-responsive agency and a key contributor to long-term wellbeing. But recent studies suggest that effortfully resisting one’s temptations does not contribute to long-term goal attainment, and can even be harmful. So how does self-control improve our lives? Finding an answer requires revising the role that overcoming temptation plays in self-control. This paper distinguishes two forms of self-control problems: temptation (the presence of a strong wayward motivation) and apathy (the lack of commitment-advancing motivation). This distinction makes (...) it possible to separate negative self-control (aimed at overcoming temptation) from positive self-control (aimed at overcoming lack of motivation). The paper argues that temptation should not play a central role in our conception of self-control, since overcoming temptation is neither necessary nor sufficient for successful self-control. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to discuss and develop the diagnose of the Hardy-Weinberg law made by van Fraassen (1987, p. 110), according to which: 1) that law cannot be considered a law used as an axiom for the classical population genetics as a whole, since it is an equilibrium-law that holds only under certain special conditions; 2) it just determines a subclass of models; 3) its generalization shades off into logical vacuity; and 4) more complex variants of the (...) law can be deduced for more realistic assumptions. The discussion and development of such a diagnose will be carried out with the notions of another semantic conceptions of theories, related to that of van Fraassen, namely, the structuralist view of theories, and a rational reconstruction of classical population genetics made within the framework of such a metatheory, also presented in this paper. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to propose a model for understanding the relation between substance and procedure in discourse ethics and deliberative democracy capable of answering the common charge that they involve an ‘empty formalism’. The expressive-elaboration model introduced here answers this concern by arguing that the deliberative practical rationality presupposed by discourse ethics and deliberative democracy involves the creation of a practical medium in which certain general basic ideas of solidarity, equality and freedom are expressed and elaborated in (...) the context of widespread moral disagreement. In the course of this paper I propose an elucidation of these ideas and argue for the thesis that they are internally related to the endorsement of deliberative practical rationality. The three basic substantive ideas contribute to the determination of the existence, the form, the topics and intended outcomes, and the effects of the practice of public deliberation. This amounts to an elucidatory defense of deliberative practical rationality by explicating its substantive significance or point. Key Words: critical theory • deliberative democracy • discourse ethics • equality • freedom • Jürgen Habermas • practical reason • John Rawls • solidarity • substance and procedure. (shrink)

To manage conflicts between temptation and commitment, people use self-control. The process model of self-control outlines different strategies for managing the onset and experience of temptation. However, little is known about the decision-making factors underlying strategy selection. Across three experiments (N = 317), we tested whether the moral valence of a commitment predicts how people advise attentional self-control strategies. In Experiments 1 and 2, people rated attentional focus strategies as significantly more effective for people tempted to break moral relative to (...) immoral commitments, even when controlling for perceived temptation and trait self-control. Experiment 3 showed that as people perceived commitments to have more positive moral valence, they judged attentional focus strategies to be significantly more effective relative to attentional distraction strategies. Moreover, this effect was partly mediated by perceived differences in motivation. These results indicate that moralization informs decision-making processes related to self-control strategy selection. (shrink)

This paper provides a critical exploration of the capability approach to human rights (CAHR) with the specific aim of developing its potential for achieving a synthesis between “humanist” or “naturalistic” and “political” or “practical” perspectives in the philosophy of human rights. Section II presents a general strategy for achieving such a synthesis. Section III provides an articulation of the key insights of CAHR (its focus on actual realizations given diverse circumstances, its pluralism of grounds, its emphasis on freedom of choice, (...) its demand for public reasoning, its context-sensitive universalism, and its broad view of obligations). These insights go some way toward the achievement of the desired synthesis. But, as explained in IV.1, in its current form CAHR faces two serious objections by the defenders of the political perspective: the Gap Between Capabilities-Interests and Rights Objection and the Disconnect From Practice Objection. Answering these criticisms requires some amendments to CAHR. Section IV.2 suggests a response to the first objection based on the introduction of a contractualist framework of justification. Sections IV.3 and IV.4 tackle the second objection by introducing a re-characterization of the cosmopolitan standard underlying the humanist perspective and by identifying the differences and relations between various dimensions of a conception of human rights and their significance for actual political practice. The paper illustrates the practical implications of CAHR, in its modified form, for the pursuit of some important rights. (shrink)

This paper presents a substantivist construal of discourse ethics, which claims that we should see our engagement in public deliberation as expressing and elaborating a substantive commitment to basic moral ideas of solidarity, equality, and freedom. This view is different from Habermas's standard formalist defence of discourse ethics, which attempts to derive the principle of discursive moral justification from primarily non-moral presuppositions of rational argumentation as such. After explicating the difference between the substantivist and the formalist construal, I defend the (...) former by showing that it is not only intuitively compelling, but also particularly well equipped for addressing four important objections recently levelled against discourse ethics and its political applications. I conclude by pointing out some consequences of the previous discussion for the future of Critical Theory. (shrink)

Human rights are particularly relevant in contexts in which there are significant asymmetries of power, but where these asymmetries exist the human rights project turns out to be especially difficult to realize. The stronger can use their disproportionate power both to threaten others’ human rights and to frustrate attempts to secure their fulfillment. They may even monopolize the international discussion as to what human rights are and how they should be implemented. This paper explores this tension between the normative ideal (...) of human rights and the facts of asymmetric power. It has two objectives. The first, pursued in section 2, is to reconstruct and assess a set of important power-related worries about human rights. These worries are sometimes presented as falsifying the view that human rights exist, or at least as warranting the abandonment of human rights practice. The paper argues that the worries do not support such conclusions. Instead, they motivate the identification of certain desiderata for the amelioration of human rights practice. The paper proceeds to articulate twelve such desiderata. The second objective, pursued in section 3, is to propose a strategy for satisfying the desiderata identified in the previous section. In particular, the paper suggests some ways to build empowerment into the human rights project that reduce the absolute and relative powerlessness of human rights holders, while also identifying an ethics of responsibility and solidarity for contexts in which power asymmetries will not dissolve. Power analysis does not debunk the human rights project. Properly articulated, it is an important tool for those pursuing it. (shrink)

For agents like us, the feeling of effort is a very useful thing. It helps us sense how hard an action is, control its level of intensity, and decide whether to continue or stop performing it. While there has been progress in understanding the feeling of mental effort and the feeling of bodily effort, this has not translated into a unified account of the general feeling of effort. To advance in this direction, I defend the single-feeling view, which states that (...) the feeling of effort is one and the same for both mental and bodily actions. This feeling represents the subjective costs, both mental and physical, of performing a given action. Cost-based approaches have recently become influential for the feeling of mental effort. Here I focus on arguing that our sense of bodily effort does not simply represent physiological processes, but rather represents the subjective costs of a bodily action. Through this paper I discuss the role of the feeling of effort (and affective states more broadly) in action guidance and the sense of agency. I also define efforts themselves in terms of the feeling of effort. (shrink)

Although the individual mandate was upheld and the Commerce Clause may have been cabined, the decision to strike down a significant element of the “Medicaid expansion” may prove to be the most significant aspect of the Supreme Court’s decision in NFIB v. Sebelius. Under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), States were required to extend Medicaid coverage to all individuals under the age of 65 with incomes below 133 percent of the poverty line, a new “essential health benefits” package was required (...) for all new Medicaid recipients, and the increased costs due to the expansion would be entirely covered by the Federal government through 2016, with the Federal payment gradually decreasing to a minimum of 90 percent of the total cost from the expanded coverage. The element found to be unconstitutional was §1396c of the ACA, which permitted the withdrawal of all Federal Medicaid funds from those States that did not comply with the ACA’s requirements for Medicaid expansion. The effect on access to health care may be significant: roughly half of those expected to gain coverage under the ACA were going to gain it through the Medicaid expansion; it is unclear how many States will choose to opt into that expansion in the absence of §1396c.1 Additionally, the argument offered by the Court to strike down that provision might be used to attack other federal programs—concerning transportation, social services, environmental protection, and others—that have a similar structure. This paper will demonstrate that the argument rests on a theoretical mistake concerning the relationships between coercion, compulsion, and political accountability and that, further, this mistake is not one legally forced upon the Court. (shrink)

Con ocasión del 80 aniversario de la Universidad Iberoamericana y de su Departamento de Filosofía hemos querido recuperar y comentar uno de los dos primeros libros que se publicaron en lo que entonces se llamaba Centro Cultural Universitario. El libro que nos ocupa es fiel testimonio de la época en que fue publicado. Las conferencias del padre jesuita Ledit son ejemplo de la manera de entender la historia moderna y contemporánea de muchos pensadores católicos preconciliares. La cristiandad medieval había realizado (...) una síntesis con el pensamiento griego. La modernidad fue la paulatina separación de esta filosofía perenne abierta a la trascendencia, con el resultado de una razón soberbia y orgullosa de su finitud; una de sus consecuencias fueron los sistemas totalitarios de la primera mitad del siglo xx, los cuales en su confrontación llevaron al estallido de la Segunda Guerra Mundial. (shrink)

Against the charge that Kant's doctrine of radical evil is inconsistent and alien to his practical philosophy, my aim is to show its necessity within the critical system. First, I undermine the alleged vacuity of Kant's notion of evil by showing that, already in the Groundwork, an evil will is the necessary conceptual correlate of a good will. "Good" and "evil" characterize the agent's form of willing and represent the source of value of right and wrong actions. Then, I show (...) how the doctrine of radical evil derives from Kant's notion of evil. That evil lies at the level of an individual Gesinnung is the result of Kant's radicalizing the use of transcendental freedom. That there is a propensity to evil in the whole species is the result of Kant's naturalizing the principles of his moral psychology. Although Kant is not clear about this distinction, the consistency of his doctrine depends on indicating that an "evil Gesinnung" and the "propensity to evil" are not equivalent concepts. Rather, they refer to different units of moral analysis, the individual and the whole species, and represent a failure to comply with different types of moral obligation: the duty to realize the good and the duty to realize the highest good. The correlation between units of moral analysis and types of obligation explains the isomorphism that Kant detects between them, as well as their logical independence, without which the individual's choice of Gesinnung would be analytically contained in the species' choice of moral nature . Finally, to account for the problem of moral self-constitution I argue for the necessity of assuming a transcendental volitional structure, the unity of acknowledgement or "I will". At the different levels of analysis, this structure organizes the will's manifold intentions according to unifying principles that allow it to recognize them as its own. Although Kant does not mention it, the "I will" is a necessary assumption to account for the continuity of choice and for its possible imputation to an agent. (shrink)