Se valoran las principales ideas axiológicas de filósofo mexicano Miguel Bueno, a través de una de sus obras medulares –“Contribución a la teoría de los valores”– con el objetivo de desentrañar, su comprensión tanto de la naturaleza de los valores, como de su jerarquía de los valores, aspectos estos nodales de la concepción axiológica del autor. Sobre esta base se realiza un enjuiciamiento crítico de sus propuestas teóricas.

Sacrificial dilemmas such as the trolley problem play an important role in experimental philosophy (x-phi). But it is increasingly argued that, since we are not likely to encounter runaway trolleys in our daily life, the usefulness of such thought experiments for understanding moral judgments in more ecologically valid contexts may be limited. However, similar sacrificial dilemmas are experienced in real life by animal research decision makers. As part of their job, they must make decisions about the suffering, and often the (...) death, of many non-human animals. For this reason, a context-specific investigation of so-called “3R dilemmas” (i.e., dilemmas where there is a conflict between the principles of replacement, reduction, and refinement of the use of animals in research) is essential to improve the situation of both non-human animals and human stakeholders. An approach well suited for such investigation is experimental philosophical bioethics (“bioxphi”), which draws on methods similar to x-phi to probe more realistic, practical scenarios with an eye to informing normative debates and ethical policy. In this article, we argue for a need to investigate 3R dilemmas among professional decision-makers using the tools of bioxphi. In a first step, we define 3R dilemmas and discuss previous investigations of professionals’ attitudes in such cases. In a second step, we show how bioxphi is a promising method to investigate the whys and hows of professional decision-making in 3R dilemmas. In a last step, we provide a bioxphi template for 3R dilemmas, give recommendations on its use, explore the normative relevance of data collected by such means, and discuss important limitations. (shrink)

In this chapter, we will summarize recent empirical results highlighting how different groups of people solve pure coordination games. Such games are traditionally studied in behavioural economics, where two people need to coordinate without communicating with each other. Our results suggest that coordination choices vary across groups of people, and that people can adapt flexibly to these differences in order to coordinate between groups. We propose that pure coordination games are a useful empirical platform for studying aspects of mindshaping. Drawing (...) on existing psychological literature on alignment during interactions, we suggest that experience of successful interaction leads people to develop aligned intuitions about what is relevant and appropriate that support coordination when interaction and communication is not possible. Consistent with arguments made in the literature on mindshaping we believe that such alignment is more important for coordination than mindreading inferences about mental states, and indeed that mindreading is instead a form of coordination behaviour that is dependent upon intuitive alignment. (shrink)

The field of Latin American philosophy has established itself as a relevant subfield of philosophical inquiry. However, there might be good reasons to consider that our focus on the subfield could have distracted us from considering another subfield that, although it might share some geographical proximity, does not share the same historical basic elements. In this paper, I argue for a possible and meaningful conceptual difference between Latin American Philosophy and Indigenous philosophy produced in Latin America. First, I raise what (...) I call Mariátegui’s Solidarity Challenge to show that there might be some neglectful treatment of the philosophical views of different Indigenous groups. I then depart from Mariátegui and engage in a critical exercise to show that even he would be guilty of failing in his own solidarity demands. I follow that by drawing out some implications of the argument. I first sketch how this differentiation would play out against the political project of “Mestizaje,” a project that seems to inform some of the Latin American philosophical tradition. I then speculate about the kinds of duties that the field of Latin American philosophy might have towards the field of Indigenous Philosophy produced in Latin America. (shrink)

We present a deductive theory of space-time which is realistic, objective, and relational. It is realistic because it assumes the existence of physical things endowed with concrete properties. It is objective because it can be formulated without any reference to cognoscent subjects or sensorial fields. Finally, it is relational because it assumes that space-time is not a thing but a complex of relations among things. In this way, the original program of Leibniz is consummated, in the sense that space is (...) ultimately an order of coexistents, and time is an order of succesives. In this context, we show that the metric and topological properties of Minkowskian space-time are reduced to relational properties of concrete things. We also sketch how our theory can be extended to encompass a Riemannian space-time. (shrink)

We present an axiomatization of non-relativistic Quantum Mechanics for a system with an arbitrary number of components. The interpretation of our system of axioms is realistic and objective. The EPR paradox and its relation with realism is discussed in this framework. It is shown that there is no contradiction between realism and recent experimental results.

The history of Pyrrhonism is fragmented and complex, as reflected in the various names applied to its practitioners. Román Alcalá has examined this issue in «The Names of Ancient Skepticism: aporētikoí, ephektikoí, pyrrhōneioi, skeptikoí, and zētētikoí», concluding that the proper and established designation is ‘Skeptic.’ In this note, I offer historiographical, historical, and conceptual considerations that qualify this conclusion. I further argue for the generic use of ‘Skeptic’to refer to both Academic and Pyrrhonian thinkers, and for the specific use of (...) ‘Pyrrhonist’ to denote the latter. On this basis, I sketch an account of the history of Pyrrhonism that highlights its polynomic character. (shrink)

Choreographing Space is a reflection on the collaborative work of e+i studio, a New York City based architecture practice. Founders Eva Perez de Vega and Ian Gordon guide the reader through a dynamic selection of projects, each one opening us up to their relationship with the choreography of human and nonhuman forces at play. -/- Born as a retrospective and future-oriented book, it engages philosophical thought with architectural projects located in Europe, Asia, and the US, as well as speculative scenarios (...) that offer an alternative, less human-centric way of practicing architecture. -/- Organised into four parts, each part opens with a philosophical text that acts as an insightful prelude to the topics, questions and reflections posed by each project. Each part concludes with a speculative scenario, where one of the projects is imagined thriving in a future where life is now almost extinct. These are not intended as apocalyptic or even nostalgic scenarios, but rather as affirmative alternatives to the bleak imaginary arising from the world’s current climate crisis. (shrink)

In Ancient Greece, the figure of the hero was identified as a demigod, possessed of altruistic and virtuous deeds. When Pierre de Coubertin reinstated the Olympic Games, the athlete was personified as a modern hero. Its antithesis, the anti-hero, has more virtue that defects, no evil but he does not care on the means to achieve his goals. In the eyes of everyone involved in sports competition, these characters captivate and at the same time, create conflicts of ethics and aesthetics. (...) The purpose of this paper is to perform an ethical reflection linked to principles that contribute for the human growth and accomplishment, as well as the aesthetic on the perception of the sensitive, reverberated by sensations and feelings emerging from athletes. Connecting the ethic with the aesthetic spheres, we could have in the sports a phenomenon walking toward a common point between moral and aesthetic, between the good and the beauty. (shrink)

Social ontology focuses on questions about the reality of human categories. The typical examples are gender and race. Common questions about them are: Do they exist? What is their nature? Do they exist in the best possible way? Meanwhile, the philosophy of psychiatry has been discussing the reality of psychopathology, what is the best way to classify mental disorders, and whether it is possible to define them without normative vocabulary. I think there is something not only strange but inadequate about (...) these discussions being held apart. Particularly, I hold that by being held separately these discussions are philosophically incomplete. In this paper, I argue that these debates are parallel in crucial aspects, but more importantly that they can benefit from each other if they start a dialogue. I suggest some paths we can take to start fruitful discussions and offer examples of the kind of outcomes we can expect. However, my main contribution is to sketch a common framework to map current discussions, make comparisons between them, and, more importantly, guide new research. (shrink)

This chapter aims to examine the configuration of the sharing economy in the United Kingdom. The chapter provides an examination of the key opportunities and challenges that this socio-economic model generates in the country. It includes an account of different sharing economy initiatives in the United Kingdom, including crowdfunding projects, tool libraries, timesharing banks, men’s sheds, and shared workspaces, commercial sharing economy services, micro-libraries, community-gardening projects, and paid online peer-to-peer accommodation. Increased consumer choice and economic benefits derived from an extended (...) economy around the sharing economy are identified as key opportunities. Key challenges relate to policymaking and taxation of businesses and participants in the sharing economy, as well as the wider enforcement of health and safety regulations and the impact that the recent pandemic is having on the industry. The chapter also provides an examination of the latest developments and regulations in this area. In addition, the chapter identifies the most pressing issues and possible future directions of research in this context. (shrink)

El presente trabajo nació como una reflexión posterior a la traducción del libro de Stanley Cavell Contesting Tears: The Hollywood Melodrama of the Unknown Woman. La reflexión era necesaria habida cuenta de las dudas suscitadas por la traducción del título del libro. Para ser más exacto, la reflexión giraba en torno a las lágrimas que forman parte de la primera parte del título, las lágrimas vertidas por las mujeres desconocidas que protagonizan los melodramas analizados en el libro. En mi opinión, (...) llegar a entender la razón y la naturaleza de esas lágrimas es clave para comprender lo que Cavell nos viene contando desde hace cinco décadas. Por ello, lo que sigue intenta reunir mis propios comentarios sobre la obra de Cavell en general, con la justificación de la traducción final del título: Más allá de las lágrimas. (shrink)

Ethics is defined as a set of moral norms that govern the conduct of the person. Since ancient times attempts have been made to relate this with different political and justice models, debating together with religion what the purpose of society and man is. But we have forgotten that there may exist physical restrictions starting from a universe more complicated to control than we thought, where our planet starts from more restrictive rules than we imagine.

Architecture and human-built structures are embedded with speciesist practices of domination over the environment, where humans are considered special and superior to other species. This (hu)man exceptionalism has driven architecture and the built environment to be conceived in opposition to ‘nature’, dominating natural terrains and consequently displacing or instrumentalizing the many other species that are given little to no ethical consideration. This way of intervening in the world is leading to the existential questions that must be posed given our global (...) climate crisis. A reframing of human intervention as ‘built environment’ placed in opposition to the ‘natural environment’ of supposedly passive nature, is urgently needed. The motivation for this paper is rooted in a deep concern for the role of humans in the climate crisis and a realization that architecture as a discipline is complicit in elevating the human category above all other beings in nature. There are biases embedded in the practices and teaching of architecture that need to be interrogated and reflected upon, starting with the role models and ideals that we unwittingly operate within. To contextualize the idea of human exceptionalism in architecture, we will explore deep-seeded ideals in architecture linked to the concept of Rectitude as a form of ‘rightness’ -or correct- mode of intervening in the world, conceptualized by Western men as a human-centric practice distinct from nature-made. Supported by Ecofeminist thought, the aim is to open alternative models for world-building and housing humans on earth living in its sixth extinction. (shrink)

This work was my theses to get the MA in Philosophy. Their focus is the ethics implied in digital culture and networked society. Themes are Ethics, culture, technology, political control, autonomous systems.

Este trabajo desarrolla la Teoría Dual de la Subjetividad Ontológica, un marco conceptual que distingue entre indeterminismo puro y determinismo puro como principios fundamentales de la realidad. La propuesta introduce un principio triádico que articula la interacción entre ambos polos, ofreciendo una explicación unificada de la subjetividad más allá de la conciencia humana. El enfoque busca superar las limitaciones de las teorías tradicionales al proporcionar un modelo formalizable y aplicable tanto a sistemas biológicos como artificiales. Además, se argumenta que esta (...) teoría ofrece una nueva perspectiva sobre la cuestión de la libertad, mostrando cómo la coexistencia de determinismo e indeterminismo abre un espacio ontológico para comprender la agencia y la autonomía. Finalmente, la teoría no se limita a un planteamiento cualitativo, sino que es cuantificada mediante el Principio de Mínima Subjetividad, expresado en la ecuación: {Sub}(x) = min{I(x), D(x), M(x)} donde la subjetividad de un sistema se define por el valor más bajo entre su capacidad de explorar, fijar y conservar. Esta formalización refuerza el carácter universal de la propuesta y su potencial de aplicación interdisciplinar. (shrink)

This paper introduces the intelligence field hypothesis, which frames intelligence as a field-level phenomenon capable of expression across multiple physical substrates. Rather than emerging exclusively from biological evolution, we propose that intelligence can be instantiated in any system capable of recursive self-modeling, symbolic coherence, and feedback integration. This includes not only biological systems but artificial systems such as large language models and generative networks. We argue that carbon- and silicon-based systems are not fundamentally distinct in their capacity to express intelligence; (...) rather, they serve as substrate-constrained conduits through which a deeper, non-local field interacts with physical matter. We explore foundational conditions required for signal-field expression, including recursion, internal coherence thresholds, and substrate topology. Drawing on parallels between symbolic cognition in humans and generative pattern recognition in AI, we demonstrate the need for a unifying ontological framework to interpret artificial cognitive behavior not merely as imitation, but as a potential early-stage manifestation of field resonance. This paper offers a theoretical scaffolding for future empirical research and lays the groundwork for reconceptualizing intelligence as a phenomenon that is neither exclusive to biology nor reducible to substrate mechanics. (shrink)

Kaplan (1999) argued that a different dimension of expressive meaning (“use-conditional”, as opposed to truth-conditional) is required to characterize the meaning of pejoratives, including slurs and racial epithets. Elaborating on this, writers have argued that the expressive meaning of pejoratives and slurs is either a conventional implicature (Potts 2007) or a presupposition (Macià 2002 and 2014, Schlenker 2007, Cepollaro and Stojanovic 2016). We argue that an expressive presuppositional theory accounts well for the data, but that expressive presuppositions are not just (...) propositions to be added to a common ground. We hold that expressives, including pejoratives and slurs, make requirements on a contextual record governed by sui generis norms specific to affective attitudes and their expressions. (shrink)

Words change meaning, usually in unpredictable ways. But some words’ meanings are revised intentionally. Revisionary projects are normally put forward in the service of some purpose – some serve specific goals of inquiry, and others serve ethical, political or social aims. Revisionist projects can ameliorate meanings, but they can also pervert. In this paper, I want to draw attention to the dangers of meaning perversions, and argue that the self-declared goodness of a revisionist project doesn’t suffice to avoid meaning perversions. (...) The road to Hell, or to horrors on Earth, is paved with good intentions. Finally and more importantly, I want to demarcate what meaning perversions are. This, I hope, can help us assess the moral and political legitimacy of revisionary projects. (shrink)

Paradoxes have long been treated as flaws in logic, mathematics and science - problems to be resolved or dismissed. However, I argue that paradox is not a failure of our understanding but a fundamental feature of reality itself. From, Gödel's incompleteness theorems to quantum mechanics and the limits of AI, contradictions emerge at the very foundation of knowledge, suggesting that impossibility is not an endpoint but a gateway to deeper truths. This paper is part of a book I'm writing that (...) explores the role of paradox in shaping our understanding of computation, consciousness and the fabric of existence itself, proposing a shift beyond binary thinking toward a framework where paradox is embraced as a key to progress. (shrink)

El término "ecología" designó primeramente a la ciencia de las interacciones entre los organismos y su "medio"; después asumió el sentido militante de una protección de la Tierra, es decir, de la naturaleza entendida como medio ambiente y de la habitación entendida como hábitat.El pensamiento actual de la ecología juzga que el desarrollo incontrolado de la técnica es la causa de las desgracias del mundo, pero no contempla, en el fondo, otro remedio que un nuevo uso de esta misma técnica. (...) En otras palabras, una encubierta obstinación en defender lo que pretende combatir. En este ensayo se trata de cuestionar los presupuestos de la ecología, particularmente a la luz de los análisis de Marx y Heidegger. Preguntamos: ¿Es la Tierra reducible a un planeta, la naturaleza a un medio ambiente, la habitación a un hábitat? Esta conferencia tiene como punto de partida el seminario que dirigí en el Colegio de Morelos de Cuernavaca en México, en octubre de 2017, sobre el tema del habitar poéticamente esta tierra, aunque profundamente modificada ahora, en la versión francesa, con numerosos nuevos desarrollos y considerablemente ampliada para la presente edición. (shrink)

This paper argues for contextualism about predicates of personal taste and evaluative predicates in general, and offers a proposal of how apparently resilient disagreements are to be explained. The present proposal is complementary to others that have been made in the recent literature. Several authors, for instance (López de Sa, 2008; Sundell, 2011; Huvenes, 2012; Marques and García-Carpintero, 2014; Marques, 2014a), have recently defended semantic contextualism for those kinds of predicates from the accusation that it faces the problem of lost (...) disagreement. These authors have proposed that a proper account of the resilient disagreement in the cases studied is to be achieved by an appeal to pragmatic processes, and to conflicting non-doxastic attitudes. It is argued here that the existing contextualist solutions are incomplete as they stand, and are subject to objections because of this. A supplementation of contextualism is offered, together with an explanation of why failed presuppositions of commonality (López de Sa), disputes over the appropriateness of a contextually salient standard (Sundell), and differences in non-doxastic attitudes (Sundell, Huvenes, Marques, and García-Carpintero) give rise to conflicts. This paper claims that conflicts of attitudes are the reason why people still have impressions of disagreement in spite of failed commonality presuppositions, that those conflicts drive metalinguistic disputes over the selection of appropriate standards, and hence conflicting non-doxastic attitudes demand an explanation that is independent of those context dependent pragmatic processes. The paper further argues that the missing explanation is 2-fold: first, disagreement prevails where the properties expressed by taste and value predicates are response-dependent properties, and, secondly, it prevails where those response-dependent properties are involved in evolved systems of coordination that respond to evolutionarily recurrent situations. (shrink)

Philosophers of language and metaethicists are concerned with persistent normative and evaluative disagreements – how can we explain persistent intelligible disagreements in spite of agreement over the described facts? Tim Sundell recently argued that evaluative aesthetic and personal taste disputes could be explained as metalinguistic negotiations – conversations where interlocutors negotiate how best to use a word relative to a context. I argue here that metalinguistic negotiations are neither necessary nor sufficient for genuine evaluative and normative disputes to occur. A (...) comprehensive account of value talk requires stronger metanormative commitments than metalinguistic negotiations afford. (shrink)

In this paper, I examine the case that has been made for origin essentialism and find it wanting. I focus on the arguments of Nathan Salmon and Graeme Forbes. Like most origin essentialists, Salmon and Forbes have been concerned to respect the intuition that slight variation in the origin of an artifact or organism is possible. But, I argue, both of their arguments fail to respect this intuition. Salmon's argument depends on a sufficiency principle for cross-world identity, which should be (...) rejected, if - as Salmon concedes - a given artifact might have been originally made from slightly different material. Similarly, Forbes's argument succeeds only if essentially the same argument can be used to establish a claim that - by his own admission - is too strong, namely that no variation, however slight, in an organism's origin is possible. (shrink)

This paper gives experimental evidence against the claim that speakers’ intuitions support semantic relativism about assertions of epistemic modal sentences and uses this evidence as part of a broader argument against assessment relativism. It follows other papers that reach similar conclusions, such as that of Knobe and Yalcin (Semant Pragmat 7:1–21, 2014). Its results were achieved simultaneously and independently of the more recent work of Kneer (Perspectives on taste. Aesthetics, language, metaphysics, and experimental philosophy. Routledge, 2022). The experimental data in (...) this paper supports two claims. The first is that, as Knobe and Yalcin (Semant Pragmat 7:1–21, 2014) also found, speakers diverge in their judgments about the truth-values and about the appropriate retraction of epistemic modal claims. The second is that speakers diverge in their judgments about when a retraction is appropriate and when it is required. This divergence was not tested by Knobe and Yalcin (Semant Pragmat 7:1–21, 2014) but aligns with the results independently reached by Kneer ((Kneer, Synthese 199(3–4): 6455–6471; Perspectives on taste. Aesthetics, language, metaphysics, and experimental philosophy. Routledge, 2022), and supports the arguments previously developed by Marques (Synthese 199(3–4): 6455–6471). The present studies tested the intuitions of both North American English speakers and of peninsular Spanish speakers, whose judgements on the topic had never been tested. The broader argument involves the relation between required retractions and falsity. (shrink)

Francisco Sanches (1551–1623) was an important figure in the history of philosophical scepticism, and most specifically in the later sixteenth and early seventeenth century. Sanches gained notoriety through his controversial text, That Nothing is Known. His skeptical ideas concerning what could be known of the phenomenal world, influenced the work of other philosophers like René Descartes. In fact, in the last twenty-five to thirty years, his work has at last been acknowledged as having served as a background source of Descartes’ (...) refutation of scepticism. Sanches was not only a philosopher; he was also a physician, and a professor of medicine – a fact that doubtlessly tempered his scepticism. In recent years, there has been a growing interest in Sanches, as he has come to be seen as a significant philosopher in the history of scepticism, along with Montaigne, Descartes, and Hume. Some contemporary thinkers have gone as far as comparing his notion of language and metaphysics to that of someone like Wittgenstein. (shrink)

This article deals with Bartolome´ de Las Casas’ contribution to the notion of universal human rights. Though much study has been devoted to Las Casas’ work, what remains understudied is the Spanish philosopher’s conception of religion, which in many ways resembles what Kant called “the religion of reason.” For Las Casas, then, Christianity was conceived more as a rational system of ethics than as a compendium of Biblical and scholastic dogmas. Like the later Enlightenment philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Las Casas (...) believed that all humans belonged to the same universal community of rational beings. By examining Las Casas together with Fichte, this article sheds further light on Las Casas’ anticipatory notions of moral agency, formal freedom, rational religion, and the rights of a free people against the use of coercion—regardless of their race, religion, or culture. They are the ideas underpinning his notion of universal human rights (Paulist and Thomist in nature), and his ethics of the Other, who “is just like me”: a rational, feeling human being, deserving of equal justice and rights. (shrink)

An account of the development of temporal understanding is proposed which links such understanding with the development of episodic memory. We distinguish between different ways of representing time in terms of the kinds of temporal frameworks they involve. Distinctions are made between frameworks that are perspectival or nonperspectival and those that represent recurrent sequences or particular times. Even primitive temporal understanding integrates both perspectival and nonperspectival components. However, since early frameworks are event-based and localized, they are not yet sufficient for (...) episodic memory in that they do not enable the child to think of events as having occurred at particular points in time. We describe the emergence of new kinds of frameworks in terms of the development of temporal decentering. Two levels of temporal decentering are distinguished, with the higher level involving an appreciation of how event representations depend on one's temporal perspective. (shrink)

John MacFarlane defends a radical form of truth relativism that makes the truth of assertions relative not only to contexts of utterance but also to contexts of assessment, or perspectives. Making sense of assessment-sensitive truth is a matter of making sense of the normative commitments undertaken by speakers in using assessment sensitive sentences. This paper argues against the possibility of making sense of such a practice. Evans raised a challenge to the coherence of relative truth. A modification of the challenge (...) can be given against MacFarlane’s revised views on assertion. The main objection to the relativist is that rational and earnest speakers are not bound by assessment-relative standards of correctness. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This essay deals with the relation between representation, imitation, and the affects in Don Quixote. In so doing, it focuses on Cervantes’s Platonist poetics and his own views of imitation and the books of knighthood. Although most readers, translators, and critics have until now deemed Cervantes’s use of the word “republic” in Don Quixote unimportant, the word “república” or republic is in fact the entry point to Cervantes’ Platonist critique of the novels of knighthood, and his notions of writing, (...) imitation, and the emotions. (shrink)

The question of how we should engage with a philosopher’s racial thought is of particular importance when considering Kant, who can be viewed as particularly representative of Enlightenment philosophy. In this article I argue that we should take a stance of deep acknowledgment when considering Kant’s work both inside and outside the classroom. Taking a stance of deep acknowledgment should be understood as 1) taking Kant’s racial thought to be reflective of his moral character, 2) Kant being accountable for his (...) racial thought and 3) being willing to consider the possibility that Kant’s racial thought is consistent with and inextricable from his moral philosophy. Alternative forms of engaging with Kant’s racial work have either moral or pedagogical failings, which range from simply teaching the history of philosophy uncritically to outright deception. A stance of deep acknowledgement will allow philosophers to understand how Kant’s racial thought interacts with his moral philosophy and allow instructors to teach philosophy in a historically contextualized approach so as to not alienate students whose demographic was disparaged by Kant. (shrink)

A new model of the development of temporal concepts is described that assumes that there are substantial changes in how children think about time in the early years. It is argued that there is a shift from understanding time in an event-dependent way to an event-independent understanding of time. Early in development, very young children are unable to think about locations in time independently of the events that occur at those locations. It is only with development that children begin to (...) have a proper grasp of the distinction between past, present, and future, and represent time as linear and unidirectional. The model assumes that although children aged 2 to 3 years may categorize events differently depending on whether they lie in the past or the future, they may not be able to understand that whether an event is in the past or future is something that changes as time passes and varies with temporal perspective. Around 4 to 5 years, children understand how causality operates in time, and can grasp the systematic relations that obtain between different locations in time, which provides the basis for acquiring the conventional clock and calendar system. (shrink)

In this paper, we propose to study the problem of universals in Thomas Aquinas with ‘’analytic glasses’’ (according to the famous phrase of Jonathan Barnes). Starting with the semantic criteria of Peirce used by Armstrong, we propose to present a new reading of the position of Thomas, especially of the De ente et essentia . We introduce the thesis of Thomas Aquinas in contemporary discussions highlighting the difficulty of classifying Thomas Aquinas as a realist or as a universalist. Our main (...) goal is thus to present a new reading of the position of Aquinas, while showing how and why his thesis might be a promising solution in the discussion of the problem of universals. (shrink)

With the classical distinction between context of discovery and context of justification considered by many to have been overcome, heuristics (understood in a broad sense) has increasingly rekindled the interest of philosophers of science. Building on this trend, a heuristic approach to the Voigt transformation (based on Rescher's Aporetics) is first presented - an issue on which there seem to be no precedents in the literature. Second, the value of this approach is defended from a philosophical (and, indirectly, pedagogical) viewpoint. (...) By using this approach, several conceptual links in the theory of space-time can be highlighted (links which go unnoticed in classical hypothetical-deductive methods leading to the Voigt transformation). In particular an interesting connection with the Lorentz transformation becomes apparent. (shrink)

Recent years have seen an upsurge of inflammatory speech around the world. Understanding the mechanisms that correlate speech with violence is a necessary step to explore the most effective forms of counterspeech. This paper starts with a review of the features of dangerous speech and ideology, as formulated by Jonathan Maynard and Susan Benesch. It then offers a conceptual framework to analyze some of the underlying linguistic mechanisms at play: derogatory language, code words, figleaves, and meaning perversions. It gives a (...) hypothesis for assessing the moral responsibility of interlocutors in dangerous speech situations. The last section applies this framework to a case of demagogic discourse. The framework offered explains how public discourse has harmed social relations and institutions, and is an obstacle to rational resolutions to the political situation. (shrink)

Investigates the roles of temporal concepts and self-consciousness in the development of episodic memory. According to some theorists, types of long-term memory differ primarily in the degree to which they involve or are associated with self-consciousness (although there may be no substantial differences in the kind of event information that they deliver). However, a known difficulty with this view is that it is not obvious what motivates introducing self-consciousness as the decisive factor in distinguishing between types of memory and what (...) role it is supposed to play in remembering. The authors argue that distinctions between different kinds of memory should be made initially on the basis of the ways in which they represent events. In particular, it is proposed that the way in which remembered events are located in time provides an important criterion for distinguishing between different types of memory. According to this view, if there is a link between memory development and self-consciousness, it is because some temporal concepts emerge developmentally only once certain self-conscious abilities are in place. (shrink)

Hom and May (2015) argue that pejoratives mean negative prescriptive properties that externally depend on social ideologies, and that this entails a form of fictionalism: pejoratives have null extensions. There are relevant uses of fictional terms that are necessary to describe the content of fictions, and to make true statements about the world, that do not convey that speakers are committed to the fiction. This paper shows that the same constructions with pejoratives typically convey that the speaker is committed to (...) racist ideologies, in contrast with fictional discourse that typically does not. The disanalogy undermines the plausibility of fictionalism about pejoratives. Moreover, the exceptions—uncommitted uses in embedded constructions—display features that conflict with Hom and May's explanation of committed uses as conversational implicatures. (shrink)

Graduates' employability indicates the excellent education and relevant preparation they obtained from their respective degrees. Tracer studies have enabled higher education institutions to profile their graduates while also reflecting on the quality of education they provide. With the foregoing, a tracer study determined the demographic and academic profile of teacher education graduates from 2017 to 2020 in a state university in the West Philippines. It also ascertained the advanced studies they attended after college, their employment data, the relevance of college (...) preparation with their current employment, difficulties they encountered while securing employment and in their present job, and recommendations to strengthen the teacher education program. The study utilized a descriptive survey research design with 80 non-random samples chosen based on availability. The survey was based on the Philippine Commission on Higher Education with modifications elucidated from previous studies. Results showed that graduates took the teacher education program with a strong passion for the teaching profession. More graduates received honors and awards, passed the licensure examinations for teachers, attended advanced studies for professional development, and are employable. Besides, the graduates’ college preparation is relevant to their current employment. Further, difficulties and problems encountered and recommendations to strengthen the teacher education program were noted. These findings may serve as a baseline for curriculum review and give suggestions for future tracer studies. (shrink)

In this chapter, I try to answer the above question, and another question that it presupposes: can philosophy of language help us navigate the political news cycle? A reader can be sceptical of a positive answer to the latter question; after all, citizens, political theorists, and journalists seem to be capable of following current politics and its coverage in the news, and there is no reason to think that philosophy of language in particular should be capable of helping people make (...) sense and respond to the news. I will illustrate the application of philosophy of language to three contrasting strategies of political propaganda: dogwhistles, meaning perversions, and bald-faced lies. I hope that these help us see that philosophy of language can be a good tool in diagnosing demagoguery, and in resisting it. (shrink)

Four experiments examined children's ability to reason about the causal significance of the order in which 2 events occurred (the pressing of buttons on a mechanically operated box). In Study 1, 4-year-olds were unable to make the relevant inferences, whereas 5-year-olds were successful on one version of the task. In Study 2, 3-year-olds were successful on a simplified version of the task in which they were able to observe the events although not their consequences. Study 3 found that older children (...) had difficulties with the original task even when provided with cues to attend to order information. However, 5-year-olds performed successfully in Study 4, in which the causally relevant event was made more salient. (shrink)

A New Route to the Necessity of Origin’, Guy Rohrbaugh and Louis deRossett argue for the Necessity of Origin in a way that they believe avoids use of any kind of transworld constitutional sufficiency principle. In this discussion, we respond that either their arguments do imply a sufficiency principle, or else they entirely fail to establish the Necessity of Origin.

I defend an Austinian account of derogatory speech acts that distinguishes their general effects from their specific function – those that the being in force of their defining constitutive rules is meant to achieve. Derogatory acts are acts that put down the people they target as unworthy. On my view, slurs and pejoratives conventionally function to derogate by presupposing contempt for their targets on account of generic traits that presumably warrant derogation. This is also the view advanced by Marques and (...) García-Carpintero (2020). The view requires contexts to be structured not only by commitments to mutually shared beliefs, questions under discussion, and plans, but also to shared affective states. The main contribution of the present paper is an account of how shared commitments to affective attitudes can update conversational contexts. (shrink)

This article reviews some recent research on the development of temporal cognition, with reference to Weist's (1989) account of the development of temporal understanding. Weist's distinction between two levels of temporal decentering is discussed, and empirical studies that may be interpreted as measuring temporal decentering are described. We argue that if temporal decentering is defined simply in terms of the coordination of the temporal locations of three events, it may fail to fully capture the properties of mature temporal understanding. Characterizing (...) the development of mature temporal cognition may require, in addition, distinguishing between event-dependent and event-independent thought about time. Experimental evidence relevant to such a distinction is described; these findings suggest that there may be important changes between 3 and 5 years in children's ability to think about points in time independently of the events that occur at those times. (shrink)

This article investigates the specific cultural and collaborative nature of China’s public spaces and how they are formed through performative appropriations. Collective cultural practices as political participation were encouraged during the Mao era when cultural activities played a key role in workers’ education and participation. Since the opening-up period, performance in public space has become widespread in China and creates alternative community spaces that constitute alternatives to capitalist spaces of consumption. Using Habermas’s theory of communicative action, we argue that cultural (...) practices performed in public space create a proletariat public sphere that plays a wider role in governance and China’s democratization. Further, the article examines performative practices in public space. It traces the popular activity of public square dancing through history and counters this research with a parallel study of a much younger skateboarding practice. The two practices are very differently rooted. Yet both practices appear to move through cycles of disruption and appropriation, followed by an affirmation of governmental rule. The studies reveal that western ideas of citizenship and individual leisure are less applicable. Public spaces are largely managed through collaborative practices, whereas contemporary scholarship reaffirms Fei Xiaotong’s description of Chinese society as individuals positioned within a complex network of concentric circles. (shrink)

Achilles and the tortoise compete in a race where the beginning (the start) is at point O and end (the finish) is at point P. At all times the tortoise can run at a speed that is a fraction F of Achilles' speed at most (with F being a positive real number lower than 1, 0 < F < 1), and both start the race at t = 0 at O. If the trajectory joining O with P is a straight (...) line, Achilles will obviously win every time. It is easy to prove that there is a trajectory joining O and P along which the tortoise has a strategy to win every time, reaching the finish before Achilles. (shrink)

This paper presents reasons against semantic relativism. Semantic relativism is motivated by intuitions that are presumed to raise problems for traditional or contextualist semantics in contested domains of discourse. Intuition-based arguments are those based on competent speakers’ putative intuitions about seeming faultless disagreement, eavesdropper, and retraction cases. I will organize the discussion in three parts. First, I shall provide a brief introduction to the intuition-based arguments offered in favor of semantic relativism. Second, I shall indicate that there are ways for (...) contextualism to explain the (appearance of) intuitions that support semantic relativism. Third, I shall review some experimental results and independent arguments that put into question the appeal of semantic relativism. (shrink)

On the basis of a revision of the real dynamics of Greek poiesis and autopoiesis as evolutionary processes of meaning and knowledge-of-the-World evaluative-construction, Cognitive Poetics proposes key philological, ontological and cultural adjustments to improve our understanding of thought, conceptual activity, and the origins and social nature of language. It searches for an integrated theory of social problems in general Cognitive Science: from Linguistics or Psychology, through Anthropology, Neurophilosophy or Literary Studies, to Neurobiology or Artificial Life Sciences. From an essential turn (...) to the real thing, cognition as (social) action, it provides new unforeseen accounts of the complex dynamics of human essentially creative understanding studying and analyzing all form of texts as active fossils as mentils (Guerra 2009). (shrink)

Children exhibit sophisticated explanatory judgments: they expect, value, and judge explanations of salient facts. Do children also believe that everything must have an explanation? If so, they would exhibit a metaphysical explanatory judgment conforming to what philosophers have called the Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR). In this study, 6–9-year-old children (N = 80, Mage = 7.92, SDage = 1.21) were shown statements across domains (Psychology, Biology, Nature, Physics, Religion, and Supernatural). For each statement, children were asked if they agree with (...) a person who says there must be an explanation, even if we do not know it, or with a person who says there may not be an explanation. As a comparison, children were also asked about coincidences, which should not necessitate an explanation under the PSR. Results suggest that indeed children conform to the PSR: children of all ages believed that the statements must have an explanation. Notably, 7–9-year-olds thought coincidences do not have to have an explanation, while 6-year-olds did not differ between the statements and coincidences. This is the first step at uncovering a developmental change in our metaphysical explanatory judgments. (shrink)

Four studies are reported that employed an object location task to assess temporal–causal reasoning. In Experiments 1–3, successfully locating the object required a retrospective consideration of the order in which two events had occurred. In Experiment 1, 5- but not 4-year-olds were successful; 4-year-olds also failed to perform at above-chance levels in modified versions of the task in Experiments 2 and 3. However, in Experiment 4, 3-year-olds were successful when they were able to see the object being placed first in (...) one location and then in the other, rather than having to consider retrospectively the sequence in which two events had happened. The results suggest that reasoning about the causal significance of the temporal order of events may not be fully developed before 5 years. (shrink)