People obtain value, or gain utility, from procedures rather than merely from outcomes. Academic researchers are slowly and selectively coming to terms with this fact, but it is neither sufficiently nor widely appreciated by actors in Hong Kong’s political arena, whether at the center or on the periphery. The territory is grappling with the issue of democratic reform—both its pace and scope—but the heated exchanges between the proponents and the opponents of representative government are confined to the outcome utility of (...) the various constitutional proposals. It is essential to incorporate the procedural element into this incomplete picture. (shrink)

This high-level study discusses Newtonian principles and 19th-century views on electrodynamics and the aether. Additional topics include Einstein's electrodynamics of moving bodies, Minkowski spacetime, gravitational geometry, time and causality, and other subjects. Highlights include a rich exposition of the elements of the special and general theories of relativity.

Recordando a Bachelard a medio siglo de su muerte (2011) -- Filosofia de la relatividad (2011) -- La proliferación de los conceptos de especie en la biología evolucionista (2010).

The present work analyzes the various expressions of the corporeal condition of human existence, from the complex, social and cultural construction of the subject and the subjectivities in Modernity, and works the metaphors of bodies (in their soma and in their psyche which are intimately linked with embodiment) disdained, mutilated and painful that are put on the scene of Latin American society, projecting what is admitted and what is forbidden, in the places of memory of resistances and dominations. Here, a (...) problematic relationship is drawn to the order and corporeal cosmos of history and society; In this way, the book expands an analysis by an inter and transdisciplinary history of the body in terms of symbolic construction and power-knowledge relations, which make it a field of events, a terrain of marriage of technical, linguistic and psychosocial devices in the aesthetic and suffering framework of the human and in the processes of subjectivation of the world. (shrink)

En este artículo se discuten algunas de las propuestas planteadas en la discusión moderna y contemporánea sobre los modelos normativos para un nuevo orden internacional. Se plantea si es posible demandar como un asunto de justicia la transformación de las relaciones de poder en el orden económico y político internacional entre las sociedades más ricas y las más pobres. Se exponen y critican cuatro diferentes modelos de orden estatal interno e interestatal. El modelo realista de un Estado absolutista que establece (...) la paz en el interior y en el exterior mediante la disuasión, y que niega que puedan plantearse criterios de justicia para definir las relaciones entre los Estados. En segundo lugar se presenta el modelo del Estado de Derecho de tipo kantiano. Le sigue el Estado social de Rawls con dos modelos diferenciados del contrato para definir las relaciones en el interior y en el exterior; y viene, por último, el proyecto cosmopolita. Por último, se critica el proyecto liberal de justicia porque reduce el problema de la reestructuración del orden internacional a un asunto de justicia distributiva y no cuestiona las estructuras del actual sistema económico global. (shrink)

Volume 19, Issue 9, September 2019, Page 37-39.

Resumen: En este artículo se muestra que la teoría de la justicia y la libertad que Axel Honneth desarrolla en El derecho de la libertad tiene un mayor alcance y profundidad que aquellas teorías de la justicia y la democracia desarrolladas en el liberalismo contemporáneo por Rawls y Habermas. Sin embargo, su modelo normativo del reconocimiento tiene una seria limitación, que consiste en circunscribir el alcance de su concepción de la libertad a las sociedades más desarrolladas de Occidente. Esta limitación (...) afecta negativamente su propuesta, produce una pérdida importante de su potencial crítico y determina que su planteamiento normativo y reconstructivo de la historia de la libertad sea insuficiente frente a otras visiones críticas de la sociedad. El autor hace primero una presentación de la tensión entre las dimensiones negativa y positiva de la libertad. En segundo lugar, reconstruye la forma como Honneth expone el proceso histórico de la lucha por la libertad, y estructura así una definición de esta que comprende tres dimensiones de la libertad: jurídica, moral y social. En tercer lugar, desarrolla unas consideraciones críticas al modelo del reconocimiento de Honneth por desconocer otras experiencias históricas de lucha por la libertad.: This article shows that the theory of justice and liberty developed by Axel Honneth in Freedom´s Right, has a wider range and depth than those theories of justice and democracy developed in contemporary liberalism by Rawls and Habermas. Nevertheless, its normative model of recognition has a serious limitation, which consists in circumscribing the reach of its conception of freedom to the most developed western societies. This limitation affects the proposal in a negative way; it produces an important loss of its critical potential and determines that its normative and reconstructive approach of freedom’s history may be insufficient in front of other critical visions of society. First, the author does a presentation of the tension between the negative and positive dimensions of freedom. Then, he reconstructs the way in which Honneth exposes the historical process of the fight for freedom and thus structures a definition of this fight, which includes three dimensions of freedom: juridical, moral and social. Finally, the author develops some critical considerations dealing with Honneth’s recognition model, as it does not acknowledge other historical experiences of the fight for freedom. (shrink)

En este artículo se consideran y critican algunas de las propuestas planteadas en la discusión contemporánea sobre los modelos normativos para un nuevo orden internacional. Primero, se discute la estrategia argumentativa de Rawls, en la cual se opone a la idea cosmopolita de una transformación del orden internacional a partir de las exigencias de justicia económica global. Segundo, se muestra que la propuesta de justicia global planteada por Pogge es insuficiente, porque aunque formula una propuesta redistributiva global, no plantea el (...) problema de la transformación del sistema de relaciones de poder en el orden capitalista actual. En tercer lugar es presentada la propuesta de Cristina Lafont de un modelo pluralista de los derechos humanos y considerada críticamente su perspectiva de construcción de una política que se oriente a la regulación del orden económico mundial, enmarcada en un nuevo discurso de los derechos humanos. This article is focused on the consideration and critique of some of the ideas exposed by the contemporary reflection on the normative models for a new international order. First, it discuses Rawls argumentative strategies, in which it is exposed the cosmopolitan idea of the transformation of the world order, beginning from the global economic justice requirement. Second, it demonstrates that the approach of Pogge's global justice is insufficient because although he formulates a global redistributive proposal, it does not touch the problem concerning the transformation of the relational power system within the current capitalist order. Lastly, it presents Cristina Lafont's proposal for a human rights pluralist model, and considers, critically, her perspective for a regulatory-oriented world economic politics, within the new discourse on human rights. (shrink)

El artículo se propone ofrecer un acercamiento a la concepción de filosofía que subyace al proyecto de una hermenéutica de la facticidad elaborado por Martin Heidegger entre 1919-1923. Esta aproximación se lleva a cabo a través del desarrollo que en la constitución de tal proyecto tiene el fenómeno de la ruina. La centralidad que este ocupa en el desarrollo temprano del pensamiento de Heidegger y, particularmente, en el curso del semestre de invierno de 1921/22, que lleva por título Interpretaciones fenomenológicas (...) sobre Aristóteles. Introducción en la investigación fenomenológica, permite hacer comprensible el sentido que para el joven Heidegger constituye la tarea de la filosofía en esta temprana etapa como hermenéutica de la facticidad. (shrink)

Para exponer el argumento político del Leviatán de Thomas Hobbes, se presenta una interpretación de su doctrina –desarrollada por Alfred Taylor, Howard Warrender y Michael Oakeshott. Según esta interpretación, la ética hobbesiana -desarrollada en la teoría de las leyes de naturaleza-, una vezseparada de su psicología egoísta, se manifiesta como una ética deontológica muy estricta, que se puede pensar muy cercana a la de Kant. En la segunda parte, se expone una interpretación de Hobbes con la que se busca señalar (...) los problemas de esta lectura del Leviatán. (shrink)

A critical survey of the main philosophical theories about events and event talk, organized in three main sections: (i) Events and Other Categories (Events vs. Objects; Events vs. Facts; Events vs. Properties; Events vs. Times); (ii) Types of Events (Activities, Accomplishments, Achievements, and States; Static and Dynamic Events; Actions and Bodily Movements; Mental and Physical Events; Negative Events); (iii) Existence, Identity, and Indeterminacy.

This paper is concerned with certain ontological issues in the foundations of geographic representation. It sets out what these basic issues are, describes the tools needed to deal with them, and draws some implications for a general theory of spatial representation. Our approach has ramifications in the domains of mereology, topology, and the theory of location, and the question of the interaction of these three domains within a unified spatial representation theory is addressed. In the final part we also consider (...) the idea of non-standard geographies, which may be associated with geography under a classical conception in the same sense in which non-standard logics are associated with classical logic. (shrink)

El proyecto inicial de Martin Heidegger, tal como aparece elaborado en los textos de sus lecciones tempranas entre 1919 y 1923, y como ha mostrado el ya clásico trabajo de Theodore Kisiel (1993), parece anticipar en cierto sentido algu- nas de las temáticas que se desarrollan de modo más sistemático en Ser y tiempo, la gran obra de 1927.

En este artículo se propone una transformación del gobierno de las universidades públicas de Colombia en el marco de una propuesta de reforma de la educación superior. En esta se debe introducir la idea de la profundización de la democracia en consonancia con las transformaciones políticas y sociales que se están dando en el país en el sentido de un cambio en las estructuras de poder político. Esta transformación tiene que darse mediante una radicalización de la representación profesoral y estudiantil. (...) This paper suggests a total change in the government of public universities in Colombia within the frame of a proposal of reform of the higher education. This reform should include the idea of deepening democracy which is in line with the political and social changes that are taking place in the country mainly as a change in political power structures. This total change must take place through a radicalization of faculty and student representation. (shrink)

En este artículo se presentan algunas críticas hechas a la teoría de justicia de John Rawls. En primer lugar, se expone la propuesta de Axel Honneth de construir una teoría de la justicia a partir de la teoría hegeliana del reconocimiento. En segundo lugar, se desarrolla la propuesta realizada por Amartya Senn y Martha Nussbaum sobre las capacidades básicas humanas. Mediante estas críticas a Rawls se busca mostrar que para asegurar las exigencias de igualdad y equidad supuestas en el liberalismo (...) es necesario construir una nueva teoría de la justicia sobre bases diferentes. (shrink)

Considering topology as an extension of mereology, this paper analyses topological variants of mereological essentialism (the thesis that an object could not have different parts than the ones it has). In particular, we examine de dicto and de re versions of two theses: (i) that an object cannot change its external connections (e.g., adjacent objects cannot be separated), and (ii) that an object cannot change its topological genus (e.g., a doughnut cannot turn into a sphere). Stronger forms of structural essentialism, (...) such as morphological essentialism (an object cannot change shape) and locative essentialism (an object cannot change position) are also examined. (shrink)

El autor analiza algunos aspectos de los debates sobre la democracia en la llamada transición de los años ̓80, para advertir sobre la preeminencia que adquirieron las disposiciones procedimentales y representativas —elevadas a condición metanormativa— y la conceptualización de la política como producción de consensos. Esas orientaciones impidieron una recuperación de las experiencias democráticas que la dictadura intentó cancelar, y fueron incapaces de poner en foco las figuras de subjetividad que el terror estatal y el neoliberalismo produjeron en tanto intervenciones (...) sobre las tramas sociales. Finalmente, el autor se detiene brevemente en algunas experiencias políticas democratizadoras, en tanto formas de aparición de los pueblos en estos últimos 40 años. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Dante’s Vision and the Circle of KnowledgeAnthony RodaDante’s Vision and the Circle of Knowledge, by Giuseppe Mazzotta; 328 pp. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993, $37.50.Future students of Dante, The Divine Comedy, literature, criticism, the history of ideas, theology, philosophy, and many other disciplines will be in permanent debt to Giuseppe Mazzotta for his keen study of Dante’s Vision and the Circle of Knowledge. While tracing the principal streams (...) of Western thought which irrigate Dante’s fertile genius, Mazzotta reconstructs the intellectual topography of Dante’s Europe and show how “l’altissimo poeta” reorders and refines it and arrives at a radical reformulation of the foundation of knowledge in contrast to the standard philosophical and theological currents of the times. This new vision of the foundation of knowledge is the central concern of The Divine Comedy which for Mazzotta provides a world view no less monumental than the synthesis of the classical and Judeo-Christian traditions of Thomas Aquinas. Perhaps, more so, for he argues Dante’s great epic provides not only an alternative epistemology but one which captures much more adequately the human historical experience.Vico’s insights, a thorough familiarity of Dante’s sources and his alert appreciation of the unique treatment these sources receive in the context of “la commedia divina” supply Mazzotta with a theoretical framework for his own brilliant critical, historical, and etymological analyses. He marshals these researches around his overriding concern to show that inherent within the Comedy is the view of “poetry as nothing less than the foundation of all possible knowledge” (p. 3). Dante’s radical claim is designed to provide an account which accords with the educational and intellectual development of the individual within history. Consequently for Mazzotta, Dante’s poetic (metaphorical) mode attempts to reconcile what must have been an intellectual and moral landscape of hopeless contradictory systems and projects. Dante’s poem [End Page 194] provides a vivid survey of the breakdown of human bonds, human projects, and human justice and suggests a corrective that escaped the methods of reason, as well as those of the mystic’s. Since both of these are at bottom antihistorical, they attempted to deny conflict and uncertainty (Dewey’s ultimate traits of experience).The above comments should suggest both the general appeal as well as, and I must emphasize, the high level of scholarship Mazzotta exhibits in his project which is arranged into three parts. The first part (Chapter 1–5) is devoted to “poetry and the arts of language,” and a quick glance at these chapters reveals that it is concerned with that part of the liberal arts called the trivium (grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic). In addition to their educational role, the author examines the role and intricate connections these disciplines have to the central social structures of the times. Consequently, these are not mere sterile academic exercises but serious attempts that show the intimate connections between methods of knowing (discourses) and social structures, especially authority in all of its modes (moral, intellectual, political, etc.). Further, by virtue of this, he shows the need for a reexamination of knowledge which does justice to the lived experiences of the individual and to which the second part (Chapters 6–8) is devoted. Briefly, this means coming to terms with language, memory, imagination, dreams and visions, and that great nightmare, human history. It also invokes the aesthetic (poetic/metaphorical) foundations of all knowledge in contrast to the Cartesian dismissal. The claim, however, enlightening for the Comedy, is controversial as a general tenet and demands will be forthcoming for an evaluation, even though there is much good work in philosophy which lends support to it, e.g., Stephen Pepper’s World Hypotheses, R. G. Collingwood’s The Principles of Art, and Lewis E. Hahn’s A Contextualistic Theory of Perception, etc.In the last part (Chapters 9–11) Mazzotta argues that Dante’s final organizing vision figures the world sub specie ludi. These chapters examine the problems and experiences of order, transgression and exile which for Mazzotta demand a Theologia Ludens whose roots are imbedded deep in Aristotle’s Ethics and expressed by the virtue of eutrapelia, “a... (shrink)

Después de la publicación de su tesis doctoral titulada La acción (1893), el filósofo francés Maurice Blondel escribió algunas obras en las que trató asuntos de enorme importancia, tanto en el campo filosófico como teológico, que desarrollaron las temáticas centrales de La acción, obra que a finales del siglo XIX generó tanto revuelo en el ambiente filosófico francés. Con la conciencia de su actualidad y su inmenso valor para una perspectiva novedosa de la metafísica y el diálogo fe-razón, se pretende (...) aquí una aproximación a cuatro obras que los estudiosos del pensamiento blondeliano han llamado “menores”. El presente artículo desarrolla los principales aportes de dichas obras a la reflexión filosófica contemporánea, indagando al mismo tiempo por la filosofía de la acción en cada una de ellas. Después de una corta biografía del pensador en cuestión, se abordará el significado de la filosofía de la acción con vistas a su elucidación para el lector. Posteriormente se presentará el contexto histórico de cada obra y se mostrarán sus vínculos con La acción, para terminar con algunas reflexiones que su lectura suscita en nuestro tiempo, cuyos desafíos son similares a los que Blondel tuvo que enfrentar en su momento. (shrink)

Reasons-first theorists claim that facts about reasons for attitudes are normatively primitive, and that all other normative facts ultimately reduce to facts about reasons. According to their view, for example, the fact that something is good ultimately reduces to facts about reasons to favour it. I argue that these theories face a challenging dilemma due to the normativity of arational lifeforms, for instance the fact that water is good for plants. If all normative facts are, ultimately, facts about reasons for (...) attitudes, then reasons-first theorists must either (a) show that these facts do reduce to facts about reasons, or (b) concede that they do not and, instead, show that this is not a problem for their view. Both options, however, are riddled with difficulties—or so I will try to argue. (shrink)

This book describes the mathematical aspects of the semantics of programming languages. The main goals are to provide formal tools to assess the meaning of programming constructs in both a language-independent and a machine-independent way, and to prove properties about programs, such as whether they terminate, or whether their result is a solution of the problem they are supposed to solve. In order to achieve this the authors first present, in an elementary and unified way, the theory of certain topological (...) spaces that have proved of use in the modelling of various families of typed lambda calculi considered as core programming languages and as meta-languages for denotational semantics. This theory is now known as Domain Theory, and was founded as a subject by Scott and Plotkin. One of the main concerns is to establish links between mathematical structures and more syntactic approaches to semantics, often referred to as operational semantics, which is also described. This dual approach has the double advantage of motivating computer scientists to do some mathematics and of interesting mathematicians in unfamiliar application areas from computer science. (shrink)

Neste artigo, temos como objetivo perscrutar o funcionamento da verbo-visualidade de uma perspectiva dialógica do discurso, utilizando, como material de análise, uma videomontagem humorística acerca do ator político Dilma Rousseff, durante a campanha presidencial brasileira do ano de 2010. Primeiramente, procuramos refletir acerca de alguns pressupostos teórico-metodológicos de Bakhtin e de Brait, qual seja, o de verbo-visualidade, alicerçado na concepção bakhtiniana de linguagem. Em um segundo momento, detivemo-nos na análise do texto objeto do artigo, que se pautou na seguinte indagação: (...) como contribuem e funcionam os elementos verbais e visuais para produção e direcionamento de sentidos na videomontagem? Nossa hipótese é a de que os discursos carregados pela montagem criam uma trilha ideológica de sentido que leva os interlocutores a interpretar a então candidata como uma pessoa sem discurso, manipulável. Diante do exposto, tentaremos demonstrar a hipótese que sustentamos. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The philosophical tradition approaches to morals have their grounds predominantly on metaphysical and theological concepts and theories. Among the traditional ethics concepts, the most prominent is the Divine Command Theory (DCT). As per the DCT, God gives moral foundations to the humankind by its creation and through Revelation. Morality and Divinity are inseparable since the most remote civilization. These concepts submerge in a theological framework and are largely accepted by most followers of the three Abrahamic traditions: Judaism, Christianity, and (...) Islam: the greatest part of the human population. Holding faith and Revelation for its grounds, the Divine Command Theories are not strictly subject to the demonstration. The opponents to the Divine Command conception of morals, grounded in the impossibility of demonstration of its metaphysical and religious assumptions, have tried for many centuries (albeit unsuccessfully) to devalue its importance. They held the argument that it does not show material evidence and logical coherence and, for this reason, cannot be taken into account for scientific nor philosophical purposes. It is just a belief and, as so, should be understood. Besides these extreme oppositions, many other concepts contravene the Divine Command theories, in one or another way, in part or in full. Many philosophers and social scientists, from the classic Greek philosophy up to the present date, for instance, sustain that morality is only a construct, and thus culturally relative and culturally determined. However, this brings many other discussions and imposes the challenge to determine what is the meaning of culture, which elements of culture are morally determinant, and finally, what are the boundaries of such relativity. Moral determinists claim that everything related to human behavior, including morality, is determined, once free will does not exist. More recently, modern thinkers argued that there is a strict science of morality. However, the scientific method alone, despite explaining several facts and evidence, cannot enlighten the entire content and full meaning of ethics. Morals’ understanding requires a broader perception, and an agreement among philosophers, which they have never achieved. All of these questions have many different configurations depending on each philosophical strand, and start complex analysis and endless debates, as long as many of them are reciprocally conflictive. The universe and the atmosphere involving this thesis are the dominions of all these conceptual conflicts, observed from an objective and evolutionary standpoint. Irrespective of this circumstance and its intrinsic importance, however, these questions are far distant from the methodological approach of an analytical discussion on objective morals, what is, indeed, the aim and scope of this work. We should briefly revisit these prominent traditional theories because this thesis shelters a comparative study, and its assumptions at least differ profoundly from all traditional theories. Therefore, it becomes necessary offering direct and specific elements of comparison to the reader, for the right criticism, dispensing interruptive researches. However, even revisiting the traditional theories, for this comparative and critical exposure purpose, they will be kept by the side of our main concerns, as “aliena materia.” Irrespective of the validity of any or all of the elements of this discussion, and their meaning as the philosophical universe of this thesis, the purpose of this work is demonstrating and justifying the existence and meaning of prehistoric moral archetypes arisen directly from the very first social needs and efforts for survival. These archetypes are the definition of the essential foundation of ethics, its aggregation to the collective unconscious and corresponding logic organization and transmission to evolutionary stages of the human genome and different relations space-time, irrespective of any contemporary experience of the individuals. The system defined by these archetypes composes an evolutionary human social model. Is this a metaethical position? Yes, it is. Moreover, as in any metaethical reasoning, we should look carefully for the best and coherent routes, as the Analytical Philosophy offers them. Thus, this work should reasonably demonstrate that morals are not a cultural product of the civilized men or modern societies and that despite being subject to several cultural relative aggregations and subtractions, its essential foundations are archetypal and have never structurally changed. This reasoning induces that morality is an original attribute of the “homo sapiens”; it is not a property and nor an accident: it integrates the human essence and belongs to the realm of the ontological human identity. The human phenomena is a continuing process, playing its role between random determination and free will, and we need to question how morality began and how did it come to us in the present. (shrink)