Resumen La naturaleza de las entidades matemáticas ha sido un problema filosófico recurrente en diversas épocas; aquí mostraré que fue una pieza clave en la definición de las posturas ontológicas durante la Modernidad temprana. La piedra de toque para la fundamentación de los conocimientos científicos fue el carácter que se atribuyó a las entidades matemáticas -y, en general, a las entidades abstractas, incluidas las lógicas- en la filosofía natural. Expongo dos posiciones de la Modernidad: la que defendió René Descartes, quien (...) las concibió como entidades perennes, inherentes a la propia constitución y funcionamiento de la mente y la de autores como Pierre Gassendi y Marin Mersenne, quienes defendieron el origen empírico e instrumental de esas entidades.The status of mathematical entities has been a recurrent philosophical problem in different times; here I explain how it was a key piece in the definition of ontological positions during Early Modernity. The touchstone for the foundation of scientific knowledge was the character assigned to mathematical entities -and, in general, to abstract entities, including logical ones- within the natural philosophy. I sketch two modern positions: on the one hand, the one defended by René Descartes, who assigned mathematical items a status of perennial entities, inherent to the very constitution and operation of the mind and, on the other, the one supported by authors such as Pierre Gassendi and Marin Mersenne, who defended the empirical and instrumental origin of those entities. (shrink)

Despite broad agreement that forgiveness involves overcoming resentment, the small philosophical literature on this topic has made little progress in determining which of the many ways of overcoming resentment is forgiveness. In a recent paper, however, Pamela Hieronymi proposed a way forward by requiring that accounts of forgiveness be “articulate” and “uncompromising.” I argue for these requirements, but also claim that Hieronymi’s proposed articulate and uncompromising account must be rejected because it cannot accommodate the fact that only some agents have (...) the standing to forgive. I end by sketching an alternative account which, I claim, explains the phenomenon of standing. (shrink)

The confinement of the population into their homes as a result of COVID-19 has entailed a notable increase in the consumption of diverse media. This exploratory study aimed to examine how the increase in media consumption was related to subjective happiness and psychological well-being. For this purpose, a questionnaire was administered to a sample of Spanish adults to assess their consumption of different media before and during confinement. Moreover, participants were evaluated for hedonic, eudaimonic, social, and experienced happiness by using (...) the Pemberton Happiness Index. The results underlined the great increase in the consumption of TV for entertainment and social networking sites during confinement. Furthermore, it was found that higher consumption was negatively correlated with the level of happiness, so that, people who reported greater well-being, both subjective and psychological, spent less time watching TV and using SNS. In contrast, no association was found between the level of happiness and the consumption of news and radio. Therefore, it seems that far from cultivating greater happiness, those who engaged in heavy consumption of TV entertainment and SNS during confinement were less happy than those who did so more moderately and spent more time using other media or performing other activities. (shrink)

The aim of this study is to assess the knowledge, attitudes and experiences of Spanish nurses in relation to euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide. In an online questionnaire completed by 390 nurses from Andalusia, 59.1% adequately identified a euthanasia situation and 64.1% a situation involving physician-assisted suicide. Around 69% were aware that both practices were illegal in Spain, while 21.4% had received requests for euthanasia and a further 7.8% for assisted suicide. A total of 22.6% believed that cases of euthanasia had (...) occurred in Spain and 11.4% believed the same for assisted suicide. There was greater support (70%) for legalisation of euthanasia than for assisted suicide (65%), combined with a greater predisposition towards carrying out euthanasia (54%), if it were to be legalised, than participating in assisted suicide (47.3%). Nurses in Andalusia should be offered more education about issues pertaining to the end of life, and extensive research into this area should be undertaken. (shrink)

En el presente ensayo se estudia el tema de la historia y la historicidad en los escritos de la primera etapa (etapa ontológica) del pensamiento de X. Zubiri. Siguiendo las sugerencias de sus maestros Ortega y Gasset y Heidegger, Zubiri aborda esta problemática desde la perspectiva de la reforma del ser, pero ya en este momento apunta una orientación propia que culminará en la etapa de madurez. Frente a la concepción antigua de la historia, la que se hizo presente a (...) partir del siglo xix y que desembocará en las diversas formas de historicismo, Zubiri sostiene que hay que entender el devenir histórico como una dialéctica de posibilidades, por lo que distingue cuidadosamente entre hecho (actualización de potencias) y suceso (actualización de posibilidades), y postula una reforma de la metafísica cuyo programa es: de la naturaleza y de la historia al ser. (shrink)

Pregnancy presents some interesting challenges for the philosophy of embodied cognition. Mother and fetus are generally considered to be passive during pregnancy, both individually and in their relation. In this paper, we use the enactive operational concepts of autonomy, agency, individuation, and participation to examine the relation between mother and fetus in utero. Based on biological, physiological, and phenomenological research, we explore the emergence of agentive capacities in embryo and fetus, as well as how maternal agency changes as pregnancy advances. (...) We show that qualitatively different kinds of agency have their beginnings already in utero, and to what extent fetal and maternal movement modulate affectivity and individuation in pregnancy. We thus propose that mother and fetus are both agents who participate in pregnancy. Pregnancy then emerges as a relational developmental organization that anchors and holds its developing participants. We end the paper with reflections on ethical implications of this proposal, and suggestions for future research. (shrink)

We describe the informed consent procedures in a research clinic in Santiago, Chile, and a qualitative study that evaluated these procedures. The recruitment process involves information, counseling and screening of volunteers, and three or four visits to the clinic. The study explored the decision‐making process of women participating in contraceptive trials through 36 interviews. Women understood the research as experimentation or progress. The decision to participate was facilitated by the information provided; time to consider it and to discuss it with (...) partners or relatives; and perceived benefits such as quality of care, non‐cost provision of methods and medical care. For some women, participation was an opportunity to express altruism. The main obstacles for participation were perceived side effects or risks. The final risk‐benefit balance was strongly influenced by women’s needs. Women perceived that the consent form benefited the clinic, proving that participants had made a free decision, and benefited the volunteers by warranting their right to free medical care. The most important problem detected was occasional misunderstanding of the information given on the form. We concluded that a full decision‐making process enhances women’s ability to exercise their right to choose, and assures research institutions that trials are conducted without coercion and that the participants are committed to the study. Researchers have the responsibility of conducting this process. (shrink)

Epistemic logic with its possible worlds semantic model is a powerful framework that allows us to represent an agent’s information not only about propositional facts, but also about her own information. Nevertheless, agents represented in this framework are logically omniscient: their information is closed under logical consequence. This property, useful in some applications, is an unrealistic idealisation in some others. Many proposals to solve this problem focus on weakening the properties of the agent’s information, but some authors have argued that (...) solutions of this kind are not completely adequate because they do not look at the heart of the matter: the actions that allow the agent to reach such omniscient state. Recent works have explored how acts of observation, inference, consideration and forgetting affect an agent’s implicit and explicit knowledge; the present work focuses on acts that affect an agent’s implicit and explicit beliefs. It starts by proposing a framework in which these two notions can be represented, and then it looks into their dynamics, first by reviewing the existing notion of belief revision, and then by introducing a rich framework for representing diverse forms of inference that involve both knowledge and beliefs. (shrink)

What does the basic right to subsistence allow its holders to do for themselves when it goes unfulfilled? This book guides the reader through the morality of infringing property rights for subsistence, in a global context.

Este artículo, escrito en clave autoetnográfica, recupera mi experiencia en la práctica de las artes marciales. Se centra en el sentido que adquiere la masculinidad entre mis compañeros varones, así como en mi propia transformación física y emocional para integrarme a ese mundo estrictamente masculino. El escrito supone un doble desafío: en la dimensión teórica, pretende arrojar luz sobre el sentido de la práctica marcial y su relación con las regulaciones que orientan la masculinidad. En la dimensión metodológica, busca explorar (...) la práctica de la autoetnografía, sus potencialidades y limitaciones. (shrink)

Classical epistemic logic describes implicit knowledge of agents about facts and knowledge of other agents based on semantic information. The latter is produced by acts of observation or communication that are described well by dynamic epistemic logics. What these logics do not describe, however, is how significant information is also produced by acts of inference— and key axioms of the system merely postulate "deductive closure". In this paper, we take the view that all information is produced by acts, and hence (...) we also need a dynamic logic of inference steps showing what effort on the part of the agent makes a conclusion explicit knowledge. Strong omniscience properties of agents should be seen not as static idealizations, but as the result of dynamic processes that agents engage in. This raises two questions: (a) how to define suitable information states of agents and matching notions of explicit knowledge, (b) how to define natural processes over these states that generate new explicit knowledge. To this end, we use a static base from the existing awareness literature, extending it into a dynamic system that includes traditional acts of observation, but also adding and dropping formulas from the current ' awareness' set. We give a completeness theorem, and we show how this dynamics updates explicit knowledge. Then we extend our approach to multi-agent scenarios where awareness changes may happen privately. Finally, we mention further directions and related approaches. Our contribution can be seen as a ' dynamification' of existing awareness logics. (shrink)

Why do we assign to countries rights to all the positive utilities from their natural resources, but hold them under no duty to bear costs for the negative utilities generated by those resources for those beyond their borders? In this paper I suggest that this ‘volcanic asymmetry’ has been overlooked by statist and cosmopolitan theories and that, despite of the arguments that might be given on its behalf, keeping this asymmetry requires further normative justification. I present two ways of getting (...) rid of it, conclude that neither is satisfactory, and point to an alternative path. (shrink)

We look at two fundamental logical processes, often intertwined in planning and problem solving: inference and update. Inference is an internal process with which we uncover what is implicit in the information we already have. Update, on the other hand, is produced by external communication, usually in the form of announcements and in general in the form of observations, giving us information that might not have been available (even implicitly) before. Both processes have received attention from the logic community, usually (...) separately. In this work, we develop a logical language that allows us to describe them together. We present syntax, semantics and a complete axiom system; we discuss similarities and differences with other approaches and mention how the work can be extended. (shrink)

Given the conceptual gap in the global justice debate today (where most of the talk is about the duties of the rich, but little is said about what the poor may do for themselves), in this article I reintroduce the idea of a right of necessity. I first delineate a normative framework for such a right, inspired by these historical accounts. I then offer a contemporary case where the exercise of the right of necessity would be morally legitimate according to (...) that framework – even though illegal and probably condemned by the standard moral norms. The case is that of a small group of Paraguayan campesinos (small farmers) suffering from the effects of a severe drought. In the third part, I introduce the concept of noncivil disobedience: I call an act of noncivil disobedience a conscientious, public, illegal and forcible act whose performance, while not necessarily intended directly as a means to bring about social and/or political change, may help to trigger these changes indirectly. In the fourth part, I suggest that certain instances where the right of necessity is overtly exercised – as in the case of the famine-struck Paraguayan campesinos – may also be interpreted in terms of noncivil disobedience, insofar as they serve a double function: as a means of satisfying immediate need, and as a marker of discontent in a society where the equal rights of individuals are a nominal ideal which remains unfulfilled in practice. I then address two objections that may be raised against resurrecting the idea of a right of necessity and identifying it in certain instances with noncivil disobedience. I conclude by suggesting that, at the point of convergence between the two, a basic right like the right of necessity recovers its value as an active, (rather than passive) entitlement of its holders, while the use of force enters the picture as a legitimate means that – at least under certain circumstances – may be resorted to within the limits of civil society. (shrink)

At Universitat Politècnica de València, Meridies, an internship programme that places engineering students in countries of Latin America, is one of the few opportunities the students have to explore the implications of being a professional in society in a different cultural and social context. This programme was analyzed using the capabilities approach as a frame of reference for examining the effects of the programme on eight student participants. The eight pro-public-good capabilities proposed by Melanie Walker were investigated through semi-structured interviews. (...) The internship is an environment in which students can put into practice the knowledge they have acquired in undergraduate studies and to find practical relevance in what they studied. Occasionally, this also entails a critical questioning of what they have learned, a greater awareness of the limits of the contents of their studies and of the way things were taught, and interest in less explored issues that are closely linked to social justice. However, tensions can arise between the pro-public-good oriented perspectives of this programme, and a more instrumental vision. One way to overcome these tensions is to foster consideration of reflexivity, that is, the dynamic relationship between technology and society. To do so, the programme must create space before and during the internship, and upon the return of the students, to discuss and collectively reflect upon their lived experience. Additionally, it ought to engage supervisors in this educational journey, both at the university and in the host institutions, and also involve socially committed organisations in this task. (shrink)

En este artículo se presenta un análisis cualitativo preliminar de los contratos laborales firmados entre cuatro músicos de Europa del este y la dirección de la Orquesta Sinfónica de Antioquia en 1949, mientras dichos músicos estaban en los campos de refugiados europeos donde los sobrevivientes de la guerra fueron congregados para su atención y rehabilitación. Con este análisis se pretende problematizar la inserción de estos personajes como agentes de modernización cultural en Medellín, haciendo énfasis en las condiciones políticas y socioculturales (...) que caracterizaban a Colombia a comienzos de la década de 1950. La nacionalidad de estos músicos (tres checos y un rumano) era objeto de sospecha desde la legislación migratoria colombiana, que desde la década de 1920 establecía un catálogo de extranjeros que no debían entrar al país, pues podían traer ideologías contrarias a la defensa de la propiedad privada. Al contrastar estos contratos laborales con la política migratoria colombiana y con la responsabilidad pedagógica cívica que se le imponía a la actividad musical académica, se plantean algunas preguntas para debatir acerca de la narrativa oficial que presenta a estos músicos como agentes de modernidad importados e integrados a un proceso de modernización cuya representación se ha caracterizado por la ausencia de conflicto. (shrink)

This article analyzes the migrant caravans as a strategy of resistance to the war against migrants in transit to the United States, exacerbated during the pandemic. This is the edited transcript of an interview conducted with Honduran journalist Inmer Gerardo Chevez, correspondent of Radio Progreso. Having travelled the Central American and Mexican routes accompanying on foot the transit of thousands of migrants since 2018, Chevez is a notable eyewitness and expert in situ of the Caravans. The interview confirms that the (...) caravan has become one of the premier forms in which Latin American migrants, including agricultural workers, struggle and their spatial dispute with the heterogeneous border control regime of the Americas are materialized. The text also reflects on the role that photography and critical journalism can play in the face of the contemporary anti-migrant policy turn. We conclude with an interpretation of the effects that the militarized violence against Latin American migrants in transit to the United States is having across the region. (shrink)

From the end of the twelfth century until the middle of the eighteenth century, the concept of a right of necessity –i.e. the moral prerogative of an agent, given certain conditions, to use or take someone else’s property in order to get out of his plight– was common among moral and political philosophers, who took it to be a valid exception to the standard moral and legal rules. In this essay, I analyze Samuel Pufendorf’s account of such a right, founded (...) on the basic instinct of self-preservation and on the notion that, in civil society, we have certain minimal duties of humanity towards each other. I review Pufendorf’s secularized account of natural law, his conception of the civil state, and the function of private property. I then turn to his criticism of Grotius’s understanding of the right of necessity as a retreat to the pre-civil right of common use, and defend his account against some recent criticisms. Finally, I examine the conditions deemed necessary and jointly sufficient for this right to be claimable, and conclude by pointing to the main strengths of this account. Keywords: Samuel Pufendorf, Hugo Grotius, right of necessity, duty of humanity, private property. (shrink)

El propósito es una lectura de la tercera edición del Facundo como estrategia de Domingo Faustino Sarmiento para la concreción de fines políticos. El estudio se centra en el nuevo escrito que el autor inserta en esta edición: "El Chacho, último caudillo de la montonera de los llanos". Se aborda, desde el campo de la Historia Intelectual, la historicidad del concepto "caudillismo", analizando los usos que hace Sarmiento del término en sus diversos contextos de enunciación. A su vez se propone (...) un análisis de la historicidad del texto mismo, observando las estrategias discursivas con que opera su autor para intervenir en la escena política. The aim is a reading of the 3rd edition of Facundo as a strategy by Domingo Faustino Sarmiento to achieve political purposes. The study focuses on the addition by the author in this edition of: "El Chacho, último caudillo de la montonera de los llanos". It discusses, from the field of Intellectual History, the historicity of the concept of "warlordism", analyzing the uses that Sarmiento makes of the term in its various contexts of enunciation. At the same time it proposes an analysis of the historicity of the text itself, observing the discursive strategies that the author operates to intervene in the political scene. (shrink)

El presente trabajo reflexiona sobre la estructura dual del signo dada por la conjunción del significado, aquello que es objeto de comprensión, y el significante, el medio material que permite expresar lo comprendido. Sin embargo, considerando la vida de emociones despertadas por estímulos cargados de valoración estética, en particular el movimiento corporal y la música, la estabilidad y armonía de di-cha estructura dual son puestas en cuestión. En dicho contexto de inestabilidad, la creatividad y la transformación se manifiestan como condiciones (...) esenciales y necesarias para la marcha del lenguaje. (shrink)

La teoria della conoscenza può essere intesa in due modi diversi, a seconda di che cosa si intende per conoscenza. In un primo senso, per conoscenza si intende il processo mediante cui conosciamo. In un secondo senso la conoscenza è intesa come il risultato di tale processo, ossia come sinonimo di sapere. Questi due significati sono riflessi nei diversi termini con cui vengono denotati in altre lingue. Mentre una teoria della conoscenza intesa come sapere non ha relazioni significative con le (...) neuroscienze (ma piuttosto con discipline filosofiche come la logica, la metodologia, la semiotica, l'ontologia), una teoria dei processi conoscitivi ha rapporti significativi con le neuroscienze, e fin dall'antichità i filosofi hanno riconosciuto nel cervello il supporto fisico delle attività cognitive superiori. Con ciò, tuttavia, le neuroscienze non possono presentarsi come surrogato di una teoria filosofica del conoscere, in quanto i processi cognitivi debbono essere preliminarmente definiti in sede filosofica, al fine di poter studiare le loro correlazioni (bidirezionali) con fenomeni nervosi. (shrink)

El problema de la manera correcta de utilizar lo artificial se ha presentado varias veces en los debates de bioética, y a menudo ha tenido que enfrentarse con un principio que siempre ha sido considerado fundamental en la ética y adoptado como criterio para evaluar la rectitud moral de las acciones humanas; es decir, el hecho de ser conformes con la naturaleza. Según este planteamiento, lo artificial es potencialmente malo, mientras que lo natural siempre es bueno. La tensión entre estos (...) dos polos se encuentra, por ejemplo, en los debates acerca de la procreación médicamente asistida, pero emerge también en las discusiones acerca de la ética del medioambiente, de la roboética, o en los debates sobre el transhumanismo. El propósito de este artículo no se limita a tratar de mitigar el conflicto entre lo natural y lo artificial, sino que pretende afirmar que lo artificial es una parte legítima de lo natural, en cuanto que es expresión específica de la naturaleza humana. Como ejemplo de la aplicación de esta tesis se discute el tema de la procreación médicamente asistida, demostrando que la eliminación de la objeción de artificialidad no resuelve otros problemas bioéticos en este campo, pero sí permite analizarlos con mayor claridad. (shrink)

Salvador Bucca fue Profesor Titular de Lingüística de la Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, Universidad de Buenos Aires, entre 1955 y 1983. Se formó en Italia y Estados Unidos. En calidad de docente y director del Centro de Estudios Lingüísticos, visitó en reiteradas ocasiones el nordeste argentino, para estudiar las lenguas de las comunidades locales. En este artículo nos enfocamos en sus viajes a la provincia de Formosa para realizar trabajo de campo en 1961, 1964 y 1968. En este sentido, (...) señalamos la importancia de su figura en torno a la gestación de los primeros estudios sobre las lenguas indígenas chaqueñas. Este trabajo forma parte de un estudio más amplio de los documentos donados por la familia del Dr. Salvador Bucca al Archivo del Laboratorio de Documentación e Investigación en Lingüística y Antropología (DILA), tarea iniciada en 2019 por parte de un equipo de la Universidad Nacional de Formosa con la transcripción de los cuadernos de campo del Dr. Bucca. La fuente que presentamos corresponde a un extracto del Cuaderno N° 4, donde el lingüista describe su viaje a través de la predominantemente rural provincia de Formosa en el invierno de 1964. En este sentido, se destacan los problemas de movilidad y hospedaje, y la reticencia de algunos funcionarios y miembros de las fuerzas de seguridad a colaborar con la investigación. La contracara está representada por los misioneros de los distintos cultos cristianos que le facilitaron el contacto con sus informantes locales. (shrink)

Given the grim global statistics of extreme poverty and socioeconomic inequalities, moral and political philosophers have focused on the duties of justice and assistance that arise therefrom. What the needy are morally permitted to do for themselves in this context has been, however, a mostly overlooked question. Reviving a medieval and early modern account of the right of necessity, I propose that a chronically deprived agent has a right to take, use and/or occupy whatever material resources are required to guarantee (...) her self-preservation, or the means necessary to acquire them. There are three individually necessary and jointly sufficient conditions: the need is basic, the claimant does not violate other equally important moral interests, and it is a last resort. I present two recommendations to be followed by the claimants, and offer some examples where this principle may be applied today. I reply to the objections that understanding the right of necessity in this way kills its intuitive plausibility, and that it is a remedy worse than the disease. I conclude that, while not the best solution for the problem of global poverty, the exercise of this right should be accepted if we believe in the human right to subsistence. (shrink)

El artículo analiza el rol que cumple la confianza en la construcción de la realidad social, argumentando que constituye uno de sus componentes esenciales. Lo es porque hace posible el nacimiento, permanencia y reconocimiento colectivo de las instituciones, así como su iteración y organización en subsistemas.

Volume 19, Issue 3, December 2023, Page 359-363.

In the present study, we investigated the effects of selective attention at encoding on conceptual object priming (Experiment 1) and old-new recognition memory (Experiment 2) tasks in young and older adults. The procedures of both experiments included encoding and memory test phases separated by a short delay. At encoding, the picture outlines of two familiar objects, one in blue and the other in green, were presented to the left and to the right of fixation. In Experiment 1, participants were instructed (...) to attend to the picture outline of a certain color and to classify the object as natural or artificial. After a short delay, participants performed a natural/ artificial speeded conceptual classification task with repeated attended, repeated unattended and new pictures. In Experiment 2, participants at encoding memorized the attended pictures and classified them as natural or artificial. After the encoding phase, they performed an old-new recognition memory task. Consistent with previous findings with perceptual priming tasks, we found that conceptual object priming, like explicit memory, required attention at encoding. Significant priming was obtained in both age groups, but only for those pictures that were attended at encoding. Although older adults were slower than young adults, both groups showed facilitation for attended pictures. In line with previous studies, young adults had better recognition memory than older adults. (shrink)