conceptual

“Mucho/muy” y “poco” en realidad no son completamente opuestos, no tanto porque sean relativamente incompatibles, sino por las muchas asimetrías que hay entre ellos. Por ejemplo, decimos “un poco”, pero no “un mucho”. ¿Será que hay varios pocos pero un solo mucho? ¿O será que “poco” es adjetivo contable, pero “mucho” es de masa? Tal vez lo que pasa es que “poco” es el análogo de “mucho” y “un poco” corresponde a “muy”, es decir, por lo general, así como podemos sustituir “poco” por “mucho” (para obtener algo parecido a su contrario), también podemos sustituir “un poco” por “muy”, con un efecto similar:  “Este cocktail está muy caro.”  “Este cocktail está un poco caro.”  También me llama la atención que si algo es poco, entonces no es suficiente, pero si es mucho, es más que suficiente. En otras palabras, no usamos la expresión “menos que suficiente” para decir “poco”, aunque sí usamos la frase “más que suficiente” para decir que algo es mucho. Aun más extra...

En su disertación, David Gaytán defiende que, en ciencia, hay dos sentidos de “explicación”, una asimétrica (es decir donde si A es parte de lo que explica B, B no puede ser parte de lo que explica A) y otra simétrica (es decir donde si A es parte de lo que explica B, B también puede ser parte de lo que explica A). La primera puede ser de dos tipos: causal (el explanans causa el explanandum) y de fundamentación (el explanans es mas fundamental en algún sentido metafísico que el explanandum). En ambos casos, la explicación en este primer sentido (asimétrico) es metafísica o, como dice él, al nivel de los hechos; mientras que en el segundo sentido (el simétrico), la explicación es mas bien espitémica o, como dice él, al nivel de las proposiciones. En este caso, explicar algo no es sino dar buenas razones para creerlo.

Aesthetics For Birds: 100 Philosophers 100 Artworks 100 Words #44 : Philosopher:   Axel Barceló , UNAM Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México Artwork:  Pond , (2006), Marcela Armas, metal tank, oil, and ca...

Traditionally, truth is considered a fundamental notion and logical consequence is considered less fundamental because it can be defined as truth-transmission. What is often forgotten is that things could also be presented the other way around: with logical consequence as fundamental and truth as derived from it. (This, I think is one of the important consequences of the work of Mike Dunn on algebraic methods for philosophical logic and David Lewis’ later work on the metaphysics of set theory). Perhaps the main difference between logical consequence and truth is that the first one is a homogenous relationship, that is a relation between things of the same sort – propositions or sets of propositions, while truth is considered either not a relation or a heterogenous one – if one thinks of truth as truth-in-a-world, that is, a relation between things of different ontological kinds: a proposition and a world. So the first step in defining truth in terms of logical consequence...

Warning: the following post mentions racial slurs, and even though I am convinced such mentions are not offensive, they might nevertheless be triggering to survivors. One of the phenomena that a linguistic theory of slurs must account for is the fact that even though both the following assertions are offensive unacceptable, they seem prima facie to be unacceptable in different senses: Selena Quintanilla was a spic. John Wayne was a spic. This difference manifests in the fact that even though some people (who, presumably, hold certain negative attitudes towards some other people, including Selena Quintanilla but not John Wayne) would find (1) acceptable, no competent speaker would find (2) acceptable. The deep question, of course, is what does “unacceptable” means here and what is the difference between these two cases. Many philosophers have tried to explain this phenomena in terms of truth, and so we have two broad camps regarding this issue: Elminativist accounts of slu...

On the ethics of (watching, doing, commercialising, etc.) pornography/adult entertainment, we commonly find six major positions: Three positions on porn itself: Neutral: There is nothing morally wrong with porn itself, but nothing good about it either. Pornography is a semantic category and, as such, it has no moral significance. Positive: Porn itself is morally good. Porn is art (Maes 2011) and art is good. Porn is, at least for the consumer, (safe, consensual, satisfying) sex and (safe, consensual, satisfying) sex is good. Negative: Porn itself is evil. It contributes to the subjugation of women. It debases sex. Positions on porn de facto, i.e., as it actually happens nowadays: Negative: Porn de facto is evil, but it need not be. It contributes to the subjugation of women, but it could not; as a matter of fact, it could be liberating to women. It debases sex, but it could not; as a matter of fact, it could ennoble our sexuality. Positive: Porn de facto is good, but ...

I have previously argued that given the strong similarities between moral and epistemic normatively (first explored by me in my 2012 pape r), we must expect to find Gettier cases in the case of moral judgments, i.e., cases where we want to claim that an agent’s actions are morally reprehensible from the internal or intentional perspective, morally reprehensible from the external or consequentialist perspective YET NOT morally reprehensible from a third perspective, different ( ex hypothesis ) from the intrinsic and extrinsic ones. This third perspective, I have argued, is the perspective from the adequate link between intentions (and preparations and similar internal aspects of action) and outcomes (and consequences and similar external aspects of action). So, just as a Gettier case in epistemology is one where one has a justified true belief which is yet not knowledge because justification and truth are not adequately linked, so a moral Gettier case would be one where one has bad i...