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This paper shows that in the philosophy of Sánchez Vázquez the basis for creative praxis is not innovation but the activity of practical consciousness, to which that Marxist philosopher describes as dialectical unity of the subjective and the objective. Furthermore, the paper argues that, in the sense of such unity and mutatis mutandi, creation has a place in non-practical human activity.

The aim of this paper is to explain the connection between discursive rules and moral norms in the frame of discourse ethics. The paper begins with an analysis of the difference between action and operation and with a reconstruction of the concept of discourse. After that, the difference and the relationship between law and obligation are presented. The conclusion is that the connection between action and possible discourse is implicit in the notion of moral responsibility.

This paper discusses some aspects of the ontological problem of bioartifacts in order to develop, within the vocabulary of philosophy of technical artifacts, a deflationed notion of bioartifact capable of revealing a meaningful distinction between those processes arisen from a natural dynamics not intentionally intervened, and those arisen from intentional intervention. With this purpose two ways of interpreting the nature of these entities (intentionalism and reproductivism) are reconstructed and evaluated. Finally this paper collects the previous arguments and tries to make explicit the levels of intentional intervention and the conditions to be a bioartifact.

The paper examines Amartya Sen’s seminal work Development and Freedom (1999) in relation to his underlying conception of justice and particularly in relation to the tension that arises in the correlation between basic freedom and basic goods. The idea is to address the question as to which of the two elements (basic goods or basic freedoms) takes precedence to the enactment of global justice. The paper advances a particular distinction between a foundational approach and a functional approach when addressing the question of the priority and primacy of any of the two elements and sheds light on a contentious answer, namely, that basic goods are foundationally primary in relation to basic freedoms and that such a primacy does not rule out the functional priority of basic freedoms.

This paper compares the way Aristotle explains how one body gets alive or the way one mind manages to understand, with the way Wittgenstein discusses some questions as how is it possible to get meaning from the sign, or to follow a rule. The paper’s goal is not to establish a real influence of Aristotle on Wittgenstein, but to explore some logical aspects of their explanation patterns, with the aim of clarifying several notions of Wittgenstein’s later philosophy.

According to Etchemendy, in attempting to offer an analysis of the modal features of the intuitive concept of logical consequence, Tarski has committed a modal fallacy. In this paper, I consider the thesis according to it is posible to analyze the modals properties of concept of logical consequence through of a generalization on set-theoretical interpretations. As is known, some philosophers have tried to argue for the transit from the general to the modal by showing that there are enough settheoretic interpretations so as to be able to represent the modal features of the intuitive concept of consequence. As is also known, those people have encountered a lot of difficulties. In the present paper, I will try to show that those problems are related not with the specific possibility of accounting for the modal features by means of a set-theoretic notion of model but with the possibility of coming up with a precise mathematical theory for the concept of interpretation, and, as such, they can be solved by way of appealing to the usual solutions to this problem.

This paper sums up the various pretexts Rousseau argues as reasons to defend women’s subordination. It seemed interesting to organise the paper in the two parts. The first one intends to decide whether Rousseau’s writing until 1755, date in which his Second Discourse was published, can be object of feminist criticism. The second, on the contrary, means to reconstruct historically the political, pedagogical and religious convictions which Rousseau makes use of in order to exclude women.

In this paper I wish to comment on the way we conceive of sexual life today, in connection with Michel Foucault’s characterization of “Sex” as something that is part of a “device for sexuality”. The paper is divided into three parts. In the first part, I attempt to analyze and criticize some major components of our conceptions of sex, namely (a) our belief that sex is a private matter, (b) the view that erotism succeeds to be a philosophical clue to the Subject-Object predicament (G. Bataille), and (c) the thesis that a new civilization based on Eros might be born (H. Marcuse). In the second part, I focus on Foucault’s position, which has been widely misunderstood. Foucault’s general argument was that the mechanics of power in our contemporary societies required a well organized device for sexual practice, theory, medical care and so on, since power required close control over the private life of individuals and the disciplinary training of bodies. He opposed the (c) thesis, which he called the “repressive hypothesis”. He also opposed the (b) view, substituting a “genealogy of the man of desire” for Bataille’s conception of erotism. Finally he opposed the (a) belief, by bringing in debate the spectacular counter-example of Ancient Greek and Latin conceptions of sexuality, to the understanding of which he devoted the last years of his life. The third part of this paper then develops Foucault’s basic assumption that in our present time, to resist power will be possible only if we become able to constitute ourselves as individuals in a new way. I argue that the enigma of sex in our lives essentially exhibits our political, philosophical and ethical weakness. With respect to politics we are deprived of the “power to act”, since every confrontation between individuals and the City has become delu- sive, thus making the art of Greek tragedy barely impossible. With respect to philosophy, we meet the major challenge of a new characterization of the Subject. With respect to ethics, we face the reality of violence everywhere. Our “private tragedies” demonstrate that we recoil into private life mainly because we feel that we have lost the world.

In this paper we critically analyze how the relation of representation between theories and phenomena is characterized in van Fraassen’s Empiricist Structuralism. Our aim is to offer arguments that emphasize the role of the object in building data models. We also propose to show that the methodological option suggested in his recent work is insufficient to recover a plausible link between data models and phenomena.

In this paper we wish to address a problem which has to do with the growing obsolescence of human beings in the context of societies which are at once ultra-technological, hyper-consumerist and based around a market economy. We aim to examine critically and in detail the psychosocial and anthropological conditions of a world where women and men are being overtaken by a sometimes explosive combination of commercial speed and globalised capitalism. Technophilia, the true fetishism of our age, operates at full capacity as one of the legitimising ideological discourses of that historical process by means of which men are dwarfed by their own creation; men overwhelmed by the crushing power of a set of technoscientific developments which - and this is crucial - unfold with relative and worrying autonomy and following dynamics which often do not respond to actual human needs. Technology, which is never politically innocent, acquires uncommon proportions and scope when, in addition, its deployment responds to a cumulative capitalist logic of a boundless nature. It is this issue, therefore, which we aim to elucidate from an anthropological and philosophical point of view.

This paper studies the role of literature and rethorics as a tool of philosophical practice within the classical tradition of «spiritual exercises». The aim of this study is to propose new ways of thinking the relations among philosophy and literature as formative or psicagogic disciplines, as well as for stand up for the role of philosophy and literature in our society.

This paper attempts to go more deeper into some ways to identify persons whose claims on justice are legitimate, trying to go beyond the traditional principles of territoriality and citizenship, which are considered inadequate for the current globalized world. Here we analyze the ideas offered from a theoretical perspective which seeks to relate the concepts of justice and democracy, extending the reflexive dynamics of politics beyond its traditional frontiers to the constitution of the demos itself.

In this paper, we investigate the proper way in which the philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty has used the phenomenological method. Understanding the being, for him, is not achieving an absolute truth reserved to an intellectual elite. Understanding the world is, on the contrary, going down, being quiet, catching up with the being and, to a certain extent, seeing things from its perspective. Taking the path of knowledge is thus downing and watching existence from its many facets without avoiding the work of the intelligence. For this reason we will go through those main aspects that distinguish the phenomenology of the first Merleau-Ponty from the phenomenon to the history passing by the existence and the other.

Thomas Kuhn’s relativistic position is usually expounded in terms of its subjectivist and irrationalist consequences and, accordingly, as a contribution to anti-scientificism. This paper explains his pluralism in semantics and ontology and shows in it a kind of relativism from which those consequences do not follow. It is also argued that, despite that, this version does not converge to empiricism or scientific realism.

The paper discusses Fichte’s reception of the kantian essay Was heißt: Sich im Denken zu orientiren? that Fichte employs in different phases of his thought in highlighting the specific nature of his Wissenschaftslehre respect to Kant’s critical philosophy and to identify the misunderstandings that led to psychological (Fries) and realistic (Bardili) misrepresentation of criticism. The article discusses the definition of objectivity of representations that can be formed from the transcendental point of view, that Fichte elaborates in the Wissenschaftslehre nova methodo; the possibility to derive a real object from the logic, which Fichte reflected in the Transzendentale Logik II (§ 3) and the different constitution of the object that can be configured within the transcendental context, that Fichte describes in the Einleitungsvorlesungen in die Wissenschaftlehre 1813 (§ 4).

I propose in this paper a reflection, a self-analysis, about my extensive teaching experience, not from a formal point of view of the specificity of the program and the subjects of my courses, but about the singularity of the teaching activities. The commitment with the students, with the topic taught and with the Institution in which I have the honor to work, constitute the fundamental motive that leads and conducts my profession as teacher. My explanation displays ten items (1.The lesson as creation. 2. Space, time, and subject. 3. There is always time. About the difficulty to adjust contents to 52 hours. 4. The worst lesson is the one not given. 5. The teacher’s virtues. 6.To spare the rod is to spoil the child. The child’s rod. 7. Extension and intensity of the contents in the academic year. 8. The reward of the well-done work. 9. Our dignity lies in the fulfillment of the agreements. 10 Tutorial, exams and evaluation). Each of them presents a speculation about one of the ideal elements of the good teacher all of us aim to be. For that reason this essay is not a positivist description of the teaching reality, but it expects to reconstruct the critical demarcation between the ideality which all of us try to achieve and the empirical reality that constantly pull us in the opposite direction. The coercion without coercions of the exemplariness pushes us to maintain alive the faith in the appropriation of the nature and soul of the ideal teacher

Sainsbury 2005 and 2009 offers a theory of empty names that purports to account for the content and truth-value of all utterances involving them. The goal is to do this while offering a homogenous semantic treatment: both empty and nonempty names make the same kind of contribution to truth-values. The account is based on a new theory of reference that purports to be an alternative among nondescriptivist accounts. According to the new theory, there is reference even without referents. In this paper I argue that the theory does not offer a homogeneous semantics for names and that, thus, it fails to offer a more satisfactory alternative to the theories already available. I conclude by briefly describing a way in which a theory could in fact offer such homogeneous semantics for names via a cognitive theory of empty names.

This paper focuses on the problematic relationship between method and object in Walter Benjamin’s research. In order to do this, first we will try to clarify the dialectical structure of the notion of “critique”, which plays a key role in his method of historical knowledge. Benjamin’s peculiar appropriation of Goethean “dialectics” will allow us then to show the structural affinity that exists between the medium of representation and the historical object represented, paying special attention to the particular case of the object called “Baroque”.

In this paper are discussed the contributions of the contemporary sociological theory to the philosophical and scientical question of Ontology, for this purpose are compared the ontological assumptions elaborated for the General Social Systems Theory by Niklas Luhmann, Communicative Action Theory by Jürgen Habermas and Actor-Network Theory by Bruno Latour.

In this paper, I will show that strict versions of Luck Egalitarianism and Democratic Egalitarianism are implausible since both claim that the object of egalitarian justice should single out one and only one value. On the contrary, weak versions are acceptable since they allow a plural composition of the egalitarian justice object.This plural understanding of the object of egalitarian justice demands the justification of normative priorities since each conception would justify conflictive demands. In this article I will make three arguments to justify the normative priority of Democratic Egalitarianism over Luck Egalitarianism: a purely instrumentalone, another concerning expressive meaning of public policies and one last argument will show why we need a division of egalitarian moral work.

The term “double bind” was first used by anthropologist Gregory Bateson. René Girard takes this contribution from the School of Palo Alto to formulate his theory of “mimetic desire”. This paper presents the transformation of this notion in contemporary anthropology.

Contrary to the view maintained by many philosophers that science employs the deductive testing of hypotheses, observational natural sciences such as paleoanthropology and the earth sciences apply a scientific methodology consisting in the proposal of hypotheses which are best fitted to the available empirical data, i.e. which best explain the data. Observational natural sciences are predominantly empirical. They are grounded in observation, and they do not implement any Popperian deductive testing of hypotheses. Theoretical natural sciences such as mathematical physics also apply inference to the best explanation for the introduction of significant concepts and hypotheses. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate that in contemporary science, the use of abductive reasoning continues to be as effective as ever.

In this paper I analyze Malcolm Budd’s “aesthetic” approach to nature that claims that the right way to appreciate nature is “as being nature” and not as being art. I study his dependence on Kant’s free beauty and I try to show that free beauty is a theoretical device derived from the unavoidable dependent beauty. Besides, following Joseph Margolis’ philosophy, I intend to show that “nature as nature” is also a cultural artifact.

The main goal of this paper is to argue that Anglo-American philosophy and Continental philosophy should work together within the arena of the philosophy of sport. To do so, the concept “communicative community”, which is found in Habermas’ and Apel’s discursive ethics, will be analyzed and applied to sports. As several authors, such as Raúl Sebastian Solanes, Robert L. Simon and William J. Morgan, have done this task before, I will critically analyze their proposals. In so doing, I will show that in order to make sense of contemporary sports we need a more integrative communicative sporting community than the ones proposed so far in the literature.

the aim of this paper is to prove that secession is inherently undemocratic. We will review the secessionist arguments: the one that starts from a wrong idea of selfgovernment and the one that starts from liberalism. then, we will oppose objections to both: defending the value of equality; rejecting internal homogeneity claims; picking up Buchanan’s classic objections; and finally, reformulating, with Habermas and Pogge, a concept of self-government in order to deduce that it is not legitimate to draw more boundaries because an ideal democracy would require to eliminate the current borders.

Within the strong branch of artificial intelligence (aI), which is aimed at creating thinking machines with intellectual powers like those of man, the most explored research program is symbolic aI, defined as the attempt to use electronic computers to replicate the human mind, either assuming a structural and functional similarity between them, or trying to replicate the behavior produced by the human mind through computational processes that also have an intentional structure but are only instrumentally equivalent. In this paper we show that strong symbolic aI, in either of its two variants, is impossible, since formal systems, that is what all computer programs ultimately are, are not sufficient to replicate in an intentional way four intellectual faculties of man that are essential to intelligent behavior: sense of the situation, common sense, procedural skills and theory abduction.

in this paper i assess Pierre Duhem’s criticism of crucial experiments, and argue that we have reasons to vindicate their existence. i then analize the experiments carried out by Fizeau and Foucault in 1850, and criticize Duhem’s interpretation of their results. i contend that the results of crucial experiences can be described in terms that are neutral with respect to the competing theories. For that reason an experimental result is relatively stable and open to different interpretations in the light of new theories. i conclude by distinguishing successful crucial experiments from decisive experiments. The former are meant to provide evidence that confirms one theory and disconfirms its rivals, but not necessarily to provide sufficient reasons for accepting or rejecting one of those theories.

The aim of this paper is to demonstrate, contrary to what experts generally consider, that the criticism that Diderot has directed at Rousseau in the Essai sur les règnes de Claude et de Néron goes beyond the biographical level, and it is deeply rooted in central structures of Diderot’s philosophy. This, on the other hand, sheds light on the place Seneca occupies in the book and on the criticism that Diderot had made to the Roman philosopher in 1745.

according to Plotinus, it is possible for the soul of the philosopher to follow a way of ascension towards the superior realities. This way is composed of two parts. The first one goes from the sensible world to the Intellect and the second, from the Intellect to the one. In this paper, I investigate the trópos and mēkhanaí, as Plotinus writes in I, 6, necessary to this journey.

In this paper we analyze the problem of how our perceptual experiences give epistemic support to our beliefs. We begin with some considerations formulated by Fodor, but revise them in some respects. We consider, in particular, his recent proposal for the existence of non-conceptual representations in perceptual information processing. Our aim is to vindicate, against the arguments raised by some representatives of so-called ‘perceptual conceptualism’, a normative role for perceptual experiences insofar as they are conceived as representations with non-conceptual content.

The paper presents and analyzes a set of unpublished notes for lecture courses on geometry, which David Hilbert gave between 1891 and 1905. it will be argued that in these lecture courses the author elaborates the conception of geometry which underlies his axiomatic investigations in Foundations of Geometry (1899). on the one hand, it is claimed that this conception of geometry can be characterized by: i) an abstract or formal axiomatic view; ii) an empiricist stance regarding the origins of geometry and its place among the different mathematical theories. on the other hand, it is asserted that the role that Hilbert assigns to geometrical intuition in the process of the (formal) axiomatization of this theory, can be used to perceive his clear opposition with regard to (radical) formalist views which he is often identified with.

This paper deals with some of the problems involved in the political theory of Arendt. She wants to emphasize the autonomy of politics, such that political activity is different from the personal and social. In this way, the public space excludes the private and the economic. Because of this exclusion, Arendt does not pay attention to certain key aspects of politics; aspects that are necessary in order to understand our present-day societies.

This paper tries a new, heterodox interpretation of Kant’s concept of autonomy. From a “heteronomous” account inquires about the possibility of thinking this autonomy without ignoring its classical interpretation, but reflecting on it as being subsidiary of a heteronomy that points out a dignity on which the autonomy has practically no meddling. It is thus highlighted, indeed, the fact that this inviolable dignity indicates a more radical practical difference than that of the logical identity on which autonomy is based and on which rests the ontology as such.

The aim of this paper is to show, on the one hand, that Stoicism is one of the main sources of Spinozian naturalism, and on the other hand, that there are differences in the scope and in the level of development of both naturalisms. Therefore, it deals with determining what are the similarities and differences in their concepts of Nature and what are the implications on a practical level. And all this, taking mainly into consideration the different conception of the passions that they maintained.

This paper first expounds the Aristotelian conception of universals. Afterwards, it determines (a) that in the metaphysics of the Stagirite there is place for divine Ideas as archetypes, and (b) which are the relations that exist between things and Ideas. It concludes, in the light of the above, with a reconsideration of the Aristotelian critique of Plato’s theory of anamnesis.

This paper explores the concept of “the sublime” in the baroque culture, aiming to demostrate that, although it wasn’t sistematically theorized until the XVIIIth century, it already played a significant role during the XVIIth century and, above all, gained a philosophical meaning, similar to those imposed subsequently, and as we will see, that is closely related withthe concept of “nihilism”.

During more than 3000 years, patriarchal religions have symbolized a sociopolitical and ideological system, which dominated the history of the word up today. Nevertheless, since at least 2 centuries, the thinking and culture are announcing the death of God Father, and inquiring the destiny of the future humanity. The current paper aims at showing why the Great Goddess Mather symbolized the Other Name, in which subjectivity and culture have begun to pronounce themselves.

This paper is divided into two main thematic blocks. First, it expounds the doctrine of the potencies of schelling, trying to show how this doctrine is based in a Potenzlose. secondly, i examine the influence of this Potenzlose to Heidegger’s Geviert.

Schnädelbach has maintained that the belief that to philosophize lies in the reading of other philosopher’s works is the illness of the contemporary philosophy. Taking Heidegger as the main source of this hermeneutical philosophy, this paper examines what is behind Heidegger’s confrontation with the history of philosophy. In particular, I analyse how Heidegger, during the second half of the 1930s, articulates his view that in order to understand the dynamics that govern our time we need to rethink the history of philosophy thoroughly.

The relationship between present-day philosophy and philosophy of the past is a fundamental issue for understanding today’s philosophical division between “analytical” and “continental” philosophy. However, the opposition doesn’t lie in the mere rejection or acceptation of philosophy’s history. In fact, both philosophical traditions conceive the possibility of a dialog with the great philosophers of the past. This paper first characterizes the relationships with past philosophy in both traditions and arguments in favor of the relevancy of philosophy’s history for philosophy.

The remarks made by Kant in his critical works concerning the existence of the thing in itself have given rise to important objections and discussions among the interpreters. In this paper we shall analyse the possibility of settling the epistemological status of such remarks by resorting to the Kantian concept of doctrinal belief.

This paper examines the Hans Blumeberg’s philosophical program: the metaphorology. My intention is to show the importance of Blumenberg’s ideas into the current debate on the relations between philosophy and metaphor.

In this paper we analyze an ambiguity concealed in the concept of determination as used by Kant in his characterization of the transcendental schema as “transcendental time-determination”. We claim that, in this context, “determination” can be understood in a dynamic way as well as in a static manner. In the first case, transcendental schemata are procedures of synthesis or temporal determination of the empirical manifold. In the second case, transcendental schemata are the basic temporal properties or determinations produced by those procedures.

This paper compares Kant’s arguments against a transcendental deduction of the moral law with Apel’s attempt to carry out a transcendental-pragmatic foundation of a “fundamental ethical norm.” Inspite of his improved conception of transcendental arguments, Apel seems to mistake the logical constriction and the normative obligation, effacing the kantian difference between theoretical and practical reason.

In his book Elements of mind Tim Crane has developed some resources in order to answer the Twin Earth mental experiment, invented by Hilary Putnam. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate that Crane’s strategy is ineffective because he misunderstands that argument. We intend to examine in detail the reconstruction of the argument that Crane offers to detect its problems. A tighter version of it is also proposed, more consistent with Putnam intentions.

We can sort the vast Kierkegaard’s literary poduction in two branches: on the one hand the works in which Kiekegaard used pseudonyms (indirect communication), employed as “identities” to communicate various philosophical points of view; on the other hand there are works with religious content, signed by himself (direct communication). In the middle we have the Journals that, although can be schematically set in the direct communication, nevertheless they do remain papers not intended for a reading public.Solely reading the Journals with the tact that one has to grant to a private work is possible to make clear the Kierkegaard’s dual authorship, as well as the deep meaning attributed by Kierkegaard to written communication.

The aim of this paper is to analyze some basic aspects of Nietzsche’s thought by tracing them back to the idea of Amor Fati, understood as the matrix from which they spring and the keystone to their pattern. The freedom-necessity duality is analyzed, posing the crucial question of why Amor Fati is for Nietzsche a call to radically face the problem of responsibility.

This paper analyzes the shared elements and the main differences of the conceptions of Hegel and Marx regarding the method. First we establish the theoretical frame of the relation between both thinkers and show the problems that this relation presents. Later we carry out a critique of the interpretation of Hegelian Marxism. Finally we give a general characterization of which we consider that make up the place of confluence of the conceptions of Hegel and Marx.

In this paper is analysed the meaning of philosophy of Wittgenstein and the role played in it by the silence and the ethic and existential attitude proposed by this author. In this sense, it pays a special attention to the way in which Wittgenstein thought the social and cultural traits of his times, particularly the idea of progress.

This paper aims at presenting the textual structure of the world in Sein und Zeit hermeneutics. Therefore, firstly, the two argumentative moments where Heidegger introduces his concept of the world are reconstructed. Secondly, it is proposed an interpretation of the world guided by a notion of text that establishes that the minimum textuality criterion is the semantic coherence. Here, there appear the relations among the world, the theory of the action, the linguistic work, the coherence and the self-reference.