This paper analyses Cartesian ethics and politics. It defends that Descartes's position in these areas coincides with his metaphysical and physical conceptions, searching a difficult equilibrium between individualism and altruism, quiet life and social commitment.

This paper analyses Cartesian ethics and politics. It defends that Descartes's position in these areas coincides with his metaphysical and physical conceptions, searching a difficult equilibrium between individualism and altruism, quiet life and social commitment.

Not as well-known overseas as it should be, there is an important and active Italian tradition of Hume scholarship. One of its most recent and more important representatives is Professor Gianni Paganini, translator into Italian and editor of Norman Kemp Smith’s already excellent edition of the Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. As is well known, it was a posthumous work by the Scottish philosopher and one of his works that raises the most difficulties for his interpreters. Paganini’s edition consists of a (...) faithful and intelligent Italian translation facing the English text as edited by Norman Kemp Smith for the Clarendon Press, ninety one notes that help us understand the text, a select.. (shrink)

In this paper, we defend the view that, although Wittgenstein does not present an epistemology of religion in the sense of the term most commonly found in traditional philosophical texts, he does explore a different understanding of religious epistemology – one that aligns the religious attitude with a particular form of know-how.

Este artículo defiende que según Descartes hay dos clases de percepción sensorial. Una que opera por impulso, confundiendo las propiedades de las cosas físicas con nuestras ideas de ellas; y la otra que procede por deducción y distingue entre aquellas propiedades de las cosas físicas que tienen una representación adecuada en nuestras ideas y las que no la tienen.

Este artículo analiza la teoría humeana del conocimiento del mundo externo. Defiende que la misma supone una defensa del realismo directo propio del sentido común y una crítica de cualquier tipo de realismo representacional así como del fenomenismo. Esta defensa es escéptica porque Hume considera que la premisa básica de tal realismo, el carácter específicamente semejante de los cuerpos y nuestras percepciones de ellos, no tiene otro fundamento que la naturaleza de nuestra imaginación y, además, contradice la razón, a la (...) vez que señala que esta última facultad es incapaz de erigir un sistema preferible a aquel sistema vulgar. (shrink)

Agricultural engineers’ jobs are especially related to sustainability and earth life issues. They usually work with plants or animals, and the aim of their work is often linked to producing food to allow people to improve their quality of life. Taking into account this dual function, the moral requirements of their day-to-day professional practice are arguably greater than those of other professions.Agricultural engineers can develop their ability to live up to this professional responsibility by receiving ethical training during their university (...) studies, not only by taking courses specifically devoted to ethics, but also by having to deal with moral questions that are integrated into their technical courses through a program of Ethics Across the Curriculum (EAC).The authors feel that a suitable pedagogical technique for achieving this goal is the use of moral dilemmas, following Kohlberg’s theory of levels of morality (1981), with the final objective of attaining a post-conventional level. This paper examines the possibilities and limitations of using moral dilemmas as a pedagogical technique for training agricultural engineers. The cases, discussions, and evaluation used in the Agricultural Engineering Department of the Technical University of Valencia (Spain) are also presented. (shrink)

La tesis sostenida por David Hume en su ensayo sobre los milagros, contenida en el capítulo X de su primera Investigación, ha sido objeto continuo de interés. Sus detractores han sostenido que el conjunto del argumento de Hume fracasa. Tras reconstruir los dos argumentos proporcionados por Hume -argumento a priori y argumento a posteriori- proponemos establecer una distinción entre milagrosn y milagros para concluir que el argumento de Hume justifica el escepticismo respecto a estos últimos. En definitiva, el argumento de (...) Hume, lejos de pretender en última instancia probar la inexistencia de los milagros como un factum dentro del orden natural, tiene por objeto demarcar la distinción entre creencias científicas y creencias religiosas como dos ámbitos que deben considerarse de manera separada. Esta diferenciación ha contribuido de manera decisiva a conformar la separación entre Ciencia y Religión propia de las sociedades secularizadas contemporáneas. (shrink)

Cartesianism was always a subject to Wittgenstein's criticism. In his case against it, he employed a general strategy that I have called "Reductio ad vacuum". There is something right in Cartesianism but without a hidden confusing premise, the truth of Cartesianism is empty. According to the early Wittgenstein, Cartesianism was right be-cause Solipsism is true: the Self is the center of the world. But without confusing this metaphysical Self with the psychological one, Solipsism becomes empty and no different from Realism.

Wittgenstein’s distinction between saying and showing and the associated thesis, what can be shown cannot be said, were crucial to his first philosophy, persisted throughout the evolution of his whole thought and played a key role in his views on aesthetics. The objective of art is access to the mystical, forcing us to become aware of the uniqueness of our own experience and life. When art is good is a perfect expression and the work of art becomes like a tautology. (...) An important consequence of this understanding of art is the irreducibility of the aesthetic to the scientific perspective. (shrink)

This article analyses Wittgenstein’s conception of nonsense and, against resolute interpretations, defends that, perhaps influenced by Mauthner and Weininger, the Tractatus author conceived corrects ontological and ethical nonsenses like nearly to tautological senseless.

Agricultural engineers’ jobs are especially related to sustainability and earth life issues. They usually work with plants or animals, and the aim of their work is often linked to producing food to allow people to improve their quality of life. Taking into account this dual function, the moral requirements of their day-to-day professional practice are arguably greater than those of other professions.Agricultural engineers can develop their ability to live up to this professional responsibility by receiving ethical training during their university (...) studies, not only by taking courses specifically devoted to ethics, but also by having to deal with moral questions that are integrated into their technical courses through a program of Ethics Across the Curriculum (EAC).The authors feel that a suitable pedagogical technique for achieving this goal is the use of moral dilemmas, following Kohlberg’s theory of levels of morality (1981), with the final objective of attaining a post-conventional level. This paper examines the possibilities and limitations of using moral dilemmas as a pedagogical technique for training agricultural engineers. The cases, discussions, and evaluation used in the Agricultural Engineering Department of the Technical University of Valencia (Spain) are also presented. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Dialoghi sulla religione naturale by David HumeVicente Sanfélix VidarteDavid Hume. Dialoghi sulla religione naturale. Edited by Gianni Paganini. Milano: Biblioteca Universale Rizzoli Classici, 2013. Pp. 430. ISBN 978-88-17-05496-6, Paperback, 12€.Not as well-known overseas as it should be, there is an important and active Italian tradition of Hume scholarship. One of its most recent and more important representatives is Professor Gianni Paganini, translator into Italian and editor of Norman (...) Kemp Smith’s already excellent edition of the Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. As is well known, it was a posthumous work by the Scottish philosopher and one of his works that raises the most difficulties for his interpreters.Paganini’s edition consists of a faithful and intelligent Italian translation facing the English text as edited by Norman Kemp Smith for the Clarendon Press, ninety one notes that help us understand the text, a select bibliography, a chronology of Hume’s life, a short history of the writing of the Dialogues, and a seventy-eight page introduction. The last of these provides Paganini’s solution to what Mossner called “the enigma of Hume,” that is, whether the meaning of this work was religious or irreligious, and in what sense. It is to this introduction and the interpretation of the Dialogues that Paganini proposes that we now turn our attention.At the beginning, and for quite a number of pages, the introduction seems to present a very detailed abstract of the development of the Dialogues, so the reader could ask why it summarizes for the reader what is going to be developed shortly in Hume’s text. Nevertheless, this expository strategy is the product of a reading [End Page 137] strategy. Paganini reads the Dialogues as a “great dramatic representation of ideas, perhaps lacking in action... but nevertheless rich in striking scenes, changes of atmosphere, attacks and defenses, returns and rethinking again and again” (5).This way of approaching the Dialogues has itself a very important hermeneutic consequence, namely, that the meaning of the work cannot be what is said by one or another of the speakers. In fact, an old problem for Hume interpreters has been the fact that the ideas of Hume himself are not expressed in the voice of a single character, as in classical dialogues, but, borrowing the words from one of Paganini’s other recent chapters, “it is the whole play that speaks for the writer, and not any single character” (Gianni Paganini, “Theism, Atheism, and Scepticism. Bayle’s Background to Hume’s Dialogues,” in Gestalten des Deismus in Europa, ed. Winfried Schröder [Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2013], 203–43, 225).This means that the apparent summary of the work, which could be considered redundant, is not really simply an abstract, but an exposition of its meaning. Using a Platonic metaphor, we could say that its meaning consists in the voyage that the principal characters of the Dialogues make during its development and that leaves them, at least the most important of them, Cleanthes and Philo, in a different position from their starting point (51–52).What, then, are the principal steps of this dialectic process in which the protagonists go about changing their minds and, above all, what is the conclusion that may be drawn from it concerning Hume’s view of natural religion? These are the decisive questions which Paganini answers, which we shall outline in the following terms.Cleanthes, basically as a result of Philo’s criticism of his views, goes from a strict experimental theism that assumes that the argument from design can be considered a sort of analogical reasoning perfectly similar in value to that which is used in ordinary and scientific reasoning to acknowledging that the argument has instead an irregular nature, not strictly nor properly scientific, in such a way that finally the belief that it can produce is, more than a strictly rational one, a natural one, similar to the belief that sensation gives us. Finally, and to be able to confront the problem of the compatibility between evil and God’s moral attributes, Cleanthes gives up the idea of an infinitely perfect divinity.If the changes in Cleanthes’s... (shrink)

This work focuses on the virtual museum, understood as the digital transformation of the traditional museum. First, the main conceptualizations of the virtual museum in the specialized literature are reviewed, and based on them, we propose a basic definition. Furthermore, we argue in favor of the insufficiency of the dataist perspective in the study of epistemic injustice associated with the virtual museum. Finally, the exclusion related to the participation and interaction between a museum’s visitors and the institution is analyzed. Este (...) trabajo se centra en el museo virtual entendido como la transformación digital del museo tradicional. En primer lugar, se revisan las principales conceptualizaciones del museo virtual en la literatura especializada y, a partir de las mismas, se propone una definición básica. Asimismo, se presentan argumentos que muestran la insuficiencia de la perspectiva dataísta en el estudio de la injusticia epistémica relativa al museo virtual. Finalmente, se analiza la exclusión relativa a la participación y la interacción entre las visitantes de un museo (tanto virtual como físico) y la propia institución. (shrink)

Los artículos de este segundo número monográfico dedicado a Descartes son un fruto más del proyecto de investigación -financiado por el Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación, [Referencia PID2021-126133NB-I00]- que lleva por título: Éticas y metafísica de los afectos. Las génesis modernas del presente actual (EMAP). Se ofrecen a continuación relecturas cartesianas que ponen el acento en la revisión de ciertos tópicos atribuidos al pensamiento del padre de la modernidad, más mencionado que leído y estudiado.

Este artículo analiza la crisis de la República romana tardía, atribuida por los antiguos autores a la decadencia moral y a los vicios orientales y cómo Cicerón, defensor de las instituciones republicanas y de los boni, se enfrentó a los populares que buscaban reformas estructurales. Se destacan sus conflictos con Catilina, Clodio, Pisón y, especialmente, con Antonio. A lo largo de su carrera, Cicerón defendió su dignitas y argumentó que las virtudes cardinales propuestas por Platón y Panecio eran clave para (...) alcanzar la verdadera gloria. En las Filípicas, atacó a Antonio y apoyó a Octaviano, aunque este último terminó traicionándolo. Estos discursos polarizaron la política romana, mostrando, según Bruto, la falta de visión política de Cicerón. Para defenderse de los ataques por su condena a los catilinarios y promover reformas estatales, Cicerón recurrió a la filosofía y defendió los principios platónicos y estoicos, abogando por la creencia en una providencia divina, la importancia de las virtudes cardinales, el uso de la razón y la superioridad del derecho natural de inspiración divina sobre la ley humana. También criticó a los epicúreos por su rechazo a la política, negación de la providencia divina y búsqueda del placer. (shrink)

En las Filípicas, Cicerón utilizó una amplia variedad de invectivas para denigrar a Antonio, retratándolo como un individuo antisocial que encarnaba todas las taras morales y vicios. Lo describió como un enemigo del Estado y un tirano que aspiraba a la autocracia y buscaba eliminar a los boni, defensores de la República. Estos insultos se analizan a lo largo del artículo y se observa en ellos una inversión de las virtudes cardinales descritas por Cicerón. Según Cicerón, estas virtudes eran las (...) cualidades que un estadista debía poseer, tal y como se detalla en su obra De Officiis, que escribió al mismo tiempo que pronunciaba las Filípicas. (shrink)

Revisión de Tesis A la mano tendida la prueba de la parafina: Memoria de la represión sobre el movimiento estudiantil de 1968.

El artículo consta de cuatro partes. En la primera parte, la introducción, señalo algunos aspectos de la importancia del proyecto. Segundo, describo y evalúo como Varela interpreta la filosofía. Tercero, exploro su eclecticismo dentro de su filosofía. Por último, explico el concepto de utilidad en el quehacer filosófico de Varela. Estos tres conceptos: filosofía, eclecticismo y utilidad están correlacionados en su obra. La filosofía con la recta razón. El eclecticismo, o lo que Varela llama la “verdadera filosofía,” con la sabia (...) selección de argumentos, incluyendo diversos métodos para explorar nuestras experiencias cotidianas, y la utilidad con la mesurada evaluación de nuestra conducta, incluyendo el bien común. Dado que estos tres conceptos son polisémicos, ellos pueden ser manipulados, y de hecho han sido tergiversados, por pensadores que han tratado de explicar el pensamiento filosófico vareliano con fines partidistas, ya sea con buenas intenciones o con fines ideológicos tendenciosos. (shrink)

This article studies the thought of those Holy Fathers who most vigorously opposed Astrology as the primary source of negative arguments in the medieval Christian debate about the validity of Astrology until the arrival of translations of Arabic astronomical works.

In this article, I contend that the three Cuban philosophers/pedagogues of the nineteenth century – Félix Varela y Morales, José de la Luz y Caballero, and Enrique José Varona were responsible for overcoming the teaching of late scholastic at the Royal and Pontifical University of St. Jerome of Havana. Against late scholastic philosophers and pedagogues who preferred syllogistic logic and the authority of tradition over induction, they argued in favor of the latter over the first. Since they defended liberal (...) and republican ideas, they also argued against those who appeal to the authority of tradition rather than to our ordinary experiences. Of course, their liberal spirit challenged not only the tyrannical regime imposed by Spain at the time but any other regime whose authority depends on force rather than on the will of the people. (shrink)

Background: Frailty is a common syndrome among older adults and patients with several comorbidities. Grip strength is a representative parameter of frailty because it is a valid indicator of current and long-term physical conditions in the general population and patients with severe mental illnesses. Physical and cognitive capacities of people with SMIs are usually impaired; however, their relationship with frailty or social functioning have not been studied to date. The current study aimed to determine if GS is a valid predictor (...) of changes in cognitive performance and social functioning in patients with type-2 diabetes mellitus and SMIs. Methods: Assessments of social functioning, cognitive performance, and GS were conducted in 30 outpatients with type 2 diabetes mellitus, 35 with major depressive disorder, 42 with bipolar disorder, 30 with schizophrenia, and 28 healthy controls, twice during 1-year, follow-up period. Descriptive analyses were conducted using a one-way analysis of variance for continuous variables and the chi-squared test for categorical variables. Differences between groups for the motor, cognitive, and social variables at T1 and T2 were assessed using a one-way analysis of covariance, with sex and age as co-variates. To test the predictive capacity of GS at baseline to explain the variance in cognitive performance and social functioning at T2, a linear regression analysis was performed. Results: Predictive relationships were found among GS when implicated with clinical, cognitive, and social variables. These relationships explained changes in cognitive performance after one year of follow-up; the variability percentage was 67.7%, in patients with type-2 diabetes mellitus and 89.1% in patients with schizophrenia. Baseline GS along with other variables, also predicted changes in social functioning in major depressive disorder, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia, with variability percentages of 67.3, 36, and 59%, respectively. Conclusion: GS combined with other variables significantly predicted changes in cognitive performance and social functioning in people with SMIs or type-2 diabetes mellitus. Interventions aimed to improve the overall physical conditions of patients who have poor GS could be a therapeutic option that confers positive effects on cognitive performance and social functioning. (shrink)