Supporters of open borders sometimes argue that the state has no pro tanto right to restrict immigration, because such a right would also entail a right to exclude existing citizens for whatever reasons justify excluding immigrants. These arguments can be defeated by suggesting that people have a right to stay put. I present a new form of the exclusion argument against closed borders which escapes this “right to stay put” reply. I do this by describing a kind of exclusion that (...) has not been discussed in depth, which I call “territorial exclusion.” Territorial exclusion is the process according to which the group that wishes to exclude current citizens secedes from the territory in which those citizens reside. I argue that the wrongness of territorial exclusion explains why there is no pro tanto right for a state to exclude immigrants, because otherwise there would be a pro tanto right for the state to kick people out by seceding from the territory they inhabit. Because kicking people out like this is typically wrong, borders cannot be closed. (shrink)

“X-Firsters” hold that there is some normative feature that is fundamental to all others (and, often, that there’s some normative feature that is the “mark of the normative”: all other normative properties have it, and are normative in virtue of having it). This view is taken as a starting point in the debate about which X is “on first.” Little has been said about whether or why we should be X-Firsters, or what we should think about normativity if we aren’t (...) X-Firsters. Hence the chapter’s two main goals. First, to provide a simple argument that one shouldn’t be an X-Firster about the normative domain, which starts with the observation that analogous views have dubious merits in analogous domains. Second, to offer an alternative view—taking normativity to be a determinable explained in terms of its determinates—that offers an interesting way to think about the structure and unity of normativity. (shrink)

The potential to collect brain data more directly, with higher resolution, and in greater amounts has heightened worries about mental and brain privacy. In order to manage the risks to individuals posed by these privacy challenges, some have suggested codifying new privacy rights, including a right to “mental privacy.” In this paper, we consider these arguments and conclude that while neurotechnologies do raise significant privacy concerns, such concerns are—at least for now—no different from those raised by other well-understood data collection (...) technologies, such as gene sequencing tools and online surveillance. To better understand the privacy stakes of brain data, we suggest the use of a conceptual framework from information ethics, Helen Nissenbaum’s “contextual integrity” theory. To illustrate the importance of context, we examine neurotechnologies and the information flows they produce in three familiar contexts—healthcare and medical research, criminal justice, and consumer marketing. We argue that by emphasizing what is distinct about brain privacy issues, rather than what they share with other data privacy concerns, risks weakening broader efforts to enact more robust privacy law and policy. (shrink)

Motion—and, in particular, local motion or change in location—plays a central role in Kenelm Digby’s natural philosophy and in his arguments for the immateriality of the soul. Despite this, Digby’s account of what motion consists in has yet to receive much scholarly attention. In this paper, I advance a novel interpretation of Digby on motion. According to it, Digby holds that for a body to move is for it to divide from and unify with other bodies. This is a view (...) of motion—as change in relations of parthood—that Alison Peterman attributes to Digby’s contemporary and acquaintance, Margaret Cavendish. Having shown that Digby’s presentation of the view predates Cavendish’s by more than a decade, I make a case that Digby’s work influenced Cavendish’s on this topic. In developing and defending my reading, I consider to what extent the Digbean account of motion and the arguments for it accord with the ideals of the mechanical philosophy emerging in the early modern period. (shrink)

Plato's dialogues frequently criticize traditional Greek myth, yet Plato also integrates myth with his writing. Daniel S. Werner confronts this paradox through an in-depth analysis of the Phaedrus, Plato's most mythical dialogue. Werner argues that the myths of the Phaedrus serve several complex functions: they bring nonphilosophers into the philosophical life; they offer a starting point for philosophical inquiry; they unify the dialogue as a literary and dramatic whole; they draw attention to the limits of language and the limits (...) of knowledge; and they allow Plato to co-opt cultural authority as a way of defining and legitimating the practice of philosophy. Platonic myth, as a species of traditional tale, is thus both distinct from philosophical dialectic and similar to it. Ultimately, the most powerful effect of Platonic myth is the way in which it leads readers to participate in Plato's dialogues and to engage in a process of self-examination. (shrink)

I ask you to X. You now have a reason to X. My request gave you a reason. How? One unpopular theory is the epistemic account, according to which requests do not create any new reasons but instead simply reveal information. For instance, my request that you X reveals that I desire that you X, and my desire gives you a reason to X. Peter Schaber has recently attacked both the epistemic account and other theories of the reason-giving force of (...) requests. Schaber defends a new theory of the reason-giving force of requests according to which request give reasons because it is valuable for requesters and requestees that requests have this power. In this paper I argue that Schaber's attack on the epistemic account fails, and that his own theory ought to be rejected because it faces compelling objections. (shrink)

This book is a study of the role of intellect in human action as described by Thomas Aquinas. One of its primary aims is to compare the interpretation of Aristotle by Aquinas with the lines of interpretation offered in contemporary Aristotelian scholarship. The book seeks to clarify the problems involved in the appropriation of Aristotle's theory by a Christian theologian, including such topics as the practical syllogism and the problems of akrasia. Westberg argues that Aquinas was much closer to Aristotle (...) than is often recognized, and he puts forward important new interpretations of the relation of intellect and will in the stages of intention, deliberation, decision, and execution. In the concluding section of the book, he shows how this new interpretation yields fruitful insights on a range of theological topics, including sin, law, love, and the moral virtues. (shrink)

Por tradición, cuando hablamos de Wittgenstein, es casi inevitable especificar a cuál Wittgenstein nos estamos refiriendo. Así, pareciera menester aclarar si estamos hablando del Wittgenstein del Tractatus,1 que tradicionalmente ha sido llamado el primer Wittgenstein, quien se esforzó por diferenciar entre lo que se puede decir con lógica y sentido y lo que no se puede decir porque son sinsentidos (más no carentes de sentido) donde encajan los juicios éticos, estéticos y religiosos, o del segundo Wittgenstein, el de las Investigaciones (...) Filosóficas,2 donde intenta dar una explicación de que el lenguaje y la razón no serían más que juegos lingüísticos con unas reglas que se han construido a medida que se ha ido jugando con ellas y las cuales hemos aprendido a manejar en la medida en que hemos conocido el lenguaje. Sin embargo, en los últimos años, hay una tesis que cobra cada vez más fuerza: solo hay una filosofía de Wittgenstein. Este trabajo es un intento de mostrar el hilo conductor entre sus dos períodos visto a través de su concepción de la religión. (shrink)

Abstract This paper offers an appraisal of Phillip Pettit's approach to the problem how a merely finite set of examples can serve to represent a determinate rule, given that indefinitely many rules can be extrapolated from any such set. I argue that Pettit's so-called ethnocentric theory of rule-following fails to deliver the solution to this problem he sets out to provide. More constructively, I consider what further provisions are needed in order to advance Pettit's general approach to the problem. I (...) conclude that what is needed is an account that, whilst it affirms the view that agents' responses are constitutively involved in the exemplification of rules, does not allow such responses the pride of place they have in Pettit's theory. (shrink)

Can a liberal state exclude illiberal immigrants in order to preserve its liberal status? Hrishikesh Joshi has argued that liberalism cannot require a commitment to open borders because this would entail that liberalism is committed to its own demise in circumstances in which many illiberal immigrants aim to immigrate into a liberal society. I argue that liberalism is committed to its own demise in certain circumstances, but that this is not as bad as it may appear. Liberalism’s commitment to its (...) own demise is merely a reflection of the fact that it must take into account the rights of outsiders, not just the rights of existing citizens, and of the fact that circumstances of injustice can sometimes leave liberal societies with no correct choice. (shrink)

This paper aims to understand Hegel’s claim in the introduction to his Philosophy of Mind that mind is an actualization of the Idea and argues that this claim provides us with a novel and defensible way of understanding Hegel’s naturalism. I suggest that Hegel’s approach to naturalism should be understood as ‘formal’, and argue that Hegel’s Logic, particularly the section on the ‘Idea’, provides us with a method for this approach. In the first part of the paper, I present an (...) interpretation of Hegel’s method in which life plays a central role. In the second part of the paper, I develop Hegel’s method by providing a reading of Hegel’s Subjective Spirit, focusing on the sections ‘Anthropology’ and ‘Phenomenology’ in particular, arguing that they display the dialectic between life and cognition outlined by Hegel’s Idea. (shrink)

El presente texto reflexiona sobre la relación entre la experiencia mística y la exposición de sentido que la estética expresa y que evidencia la praxis de la razón mística en tanto pensamiento de la revelación. La estética de la razón mística se propone como el corpus de vivencias místicas que permiten proponer un pensar del alba, cuya partición del espacio y el tiempo, provoca relaciones de comparecencia en las que “lo otro que ser” expone el sentido de alteridad de la (...) mística, permitiendo proponer una cotidianidad de la experiencia mística evocada en la mención de una confluencia de amaneceres internos, la vivencia de un tiempo en el que la revelación constituye una vida. (shrink)

“Políticas de la hospitalidad” presenta una reflexión sobre el don, la ofrenda y el perdón, en referencia con la relación de comunidad que el estar-con-otro-en-el-mundo inaugura, en la experiencia de las relaciones de alteridad en el tiempo del encuentro en la contemporaneidad, donde la hospitalidad, en tanto comprensión de la responsabilidad para con el otro, conlleva la vivencia de una política de la diferencia.

CONTENIDO: El entierro - El padre - Otro padre - La montaña mágica - Los amigos - Bucarest - En Sumapáz - Yolanda - Cali - Medellín - Freud - Doctorado Honoris Causa - Los derechos humanos - La angustia.

This paper aims to understand Hegel’s claim in the introduction to his Philosophy of Mind that mind is an actualization of the Idea and argues that this claim provides us with a novel and defensible way of understanding Hegel’s naturalism. I suggest that Hegel’s approach to naturalism should be understood as ‘formal’, and argue that Hegel’s Logic, particularly the section on the ‘Idea’, provides us with a method for this approach. In the first part of the paper, I present an (...) interpretation of Hegel’s method in which life plays a central role. In the second part of the paper, I develop Hegel’s method by providing a reading of Hegel’s Subjective Spirit, focusing on the sections ‘Anthropology’ and ‘Phenomenology’ in particular, arguing that they display the dialectic between life and cognition outlined by Hegel’s Idea. (shrink)

This essay considers the critical response to Hegel's view of Socrates we find in Kierkegaard's dissertation, The Concept of Irony. I argue that this dispute turns on the question whether or not the examination of particular thinkers enters into Socrates’ most basic aims and interests. I go on to show how Kierkegaard's account, which relies on an affirmative answer to this question, enables him to provide a cogent defence of Socrates' philosophical practice against Hegel's criticisms.

In philosophy, the textbook case for the discussion of human motivation is the examination (and almost always, the refutation) of psychological egoism. The arguments have become part of the folklore of our tribe, from their inclusion in countless introductory texts. [...] One of my central aims has been to define the issues empirically, so we do not just settle them by definition. Although I am inclined at present to put my bets on the reward-event theory, with its internalism, monism, and (...) causal primacy of satisfaction, I think we are very far from knowing enough to settle these questions concerning motivation, human or otherwise. The winds of science will blow where they may. In the meantime, we can be a bit more circumspect about what we put in our tribal folklore. (shrink)

What motivates behavior? What are the qualities of experience which make life worth living? Taking a new interdisciplinary approach, Morillo advances the theory that pleasure—interpreted as a distinct, separable, noncognitive quality of experience—is essential for all positive motivation and is the only intrinsic, nonmoral good in the lives of human beings and many other sentient creatures. Morillo supports her arguments with recent neuropsychological evidence concerning the role of reward centers in the brain and philosophical arguments for a naturalistic (...) theory of value and the good life. "Contingent Creatures" will interest philosophers, psychologists, and neurobiologists. (shrink)

The main goal of this article is to explain the transdisciplinary training model developed at the National University of Education in Ecuador, based on the ancestral worldviews of Buen Vivir. Good Living is a philosophical and political concept of the Kichwa indigenous peoples in the Andean Region, where human beings are interconnected with planet Earth and the whole cosmos. In 2008, Ecuador became the first country in the world to recognize the Rights of Nature in its Constitution, in order to (...) face climate change and to restore the ecological footprint. This article first unifies scientific knowledge with ancestral wisdom, creating an inter-epistemological dialogue using a transdisciplinary approach. Second, the article explores the epistemological notions of transdisciplinary education: self-training, hetero-training, eco-training, and onto-training. Third, the article argues that as a result, Educational Sciences of Good Living emerged to design regenerative cultures that face socio-ecological challenges of the Anthropocene age. In sum, the article argues that training transdisciplinary educators implies an intercultural, decolonial, and biocentric approach that promotes their inner spiritual self-awareness, among other perceptive, affective, emotional, rhetorical, poetic, epistemic, creative, artistic, cognitive, and philosophical dimensions. (shrink)

According to ethical objectivism, what a person should do depends on the facts, as opposed to their perspective on the facts. A long-standing challenge to this view is that it fails to accommodate the role that norms play in guiding a person’s action. Roughly, if the facts that determine what a person should do lie beyond their ken, they cannot inform a person’s deliberations. This paper explores two recent developments of this line of thought. Both focus on the epistemic counterpart (...) to ethical objectivism, according to which what a person should believe depends on the facts, as opposed to their perspective on the facts. The suggestion in each case is that epistemic objectivism faces a distinctive problem in accommodating guidance. Insofar as objectivism concerning the epistemic domain stands or falls with objectivism concerning the ethical domain, this is a problem for objectivism more generally. In this paper, I show that those arguments are not successful. The upshot is that the objectivist – whether ethical or epistemic – need not reject the idea that norms serve a guiding function. (shrink)

Este artículo presenta una reflexión sobre el don, la ofrenda y el perdón referida a la relación de comunidad inaugurada por el estar-con-otro-en-el-mundo, en la experiencia de las relaciones de alteridad, donde la hospitalidad, en tanto comprensión de la responsabilidad para con el otro, conlleva la vivencia de una política de la diferencia. Esta propuesta recupera los aportes teóricos de Emmanuel Levinas, Jacques Derrida, Jean-Luc Nancy, entre otros.

Chapter I: The Geometry of Visibles 1 . The N on- Euclidean Geometry of Visibles In the chapter "The Geometry of Visibles" in Inquiry into the Human Mind, ...

Enmarcados en el quinto centenario del nacimiento de Santa Teresa de Jesús, presentamos el siguiente trabajo, en donde se intenta poner de manifiesto las posibles influencias existentes entre San Agustín de Hipona y la primera Doctora de la Iglesia Universal. Para ello, se invita al lector a realizar un breve recorrido por la vida teresiana, desde su infancia hasta su muerte acaecida en Alba de Tormes la noche del 15 de Octubre del 1582. Así, ambos Doctores —con la eminencia de (...) sus doctrinas y la santidad de sus vidas— comunican al mundo que “quien a Dios tiene nada le falta”, pues “sólo Él es el bien que hace feliz a la criatura”. (shrink)

Sin duda alguna, es San Agustín de Hipona el Padre de la Iglesia que mayor influjo ha ejercido —y continúa ejerciendo— en esta, así como en numerosos Pontífices. Uno de ellos, Benedicto XVI, será el objeto de nuestro estudio investigativo, estudio que —progresivamente— irá siendo completado, así como viendo la luz, a través de una serie de artículos. En este caso, serán ciertos documentos tales como Encíclicas, Exhortaciones Apostólicas y documentos en motu proprio, los que centren toda nuestra atención. En (...) estos, el lector podrá descubrir con una mayor fluidez cuántas influencias agustinianas, directas o indirectas, se hallan reflejadas en dichos documentos pontificios. Es por ello que invitamos a su lectura pausada y detenida reflexión. (shrink)

Lovejoy (1873-1962) was America's foremost historian of ideas, a major participant in the philosophical debates of the twentieth century, and a prominent advocate of academic freedom. The product of an emotionally unsettled childhood and an evangelical father, Lovejoy reacted against his father by postulating the certainty of self-sufficient reason. He believed that only the principles of reason could order the world and so make our universe intelligible. Originally published in 1980. A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions (...) use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value. (shrink)

Despite myriad controversies about reasons, two theses are frequently taken for granted: (i) reasons are sources of normative support for actions, attitudes, etc; and (ii) reasons, at least in simple, paradigmatic cases, consist in atomic facts. Call this conjunction “the atomic view.” Against this, we advocate what we call “the cluster view,” on which even in the simplest cases, the normative support for an action or attitude is typically provided by a whole cluster of facts. Moreover, many of these facts (...) are on an explanatory par—they each play the same kind of role in explaining why there is normative support for the action or attitude in question. We show that presupposition of the atomic view generates unnecessary (psuedo-)puzzles⁠—about topics such as rationality, moral worth, and doxastic justification⁠—that can be largely (dis)solved with the cluster view in place. The cluster view’s ability to do this constitutes an argument in its favor, beyond intuitive considerations that we also adduce. (shrink)

A developing neurobiological/psychological theory of positive motivation gives a key causal role to reward events in the brain which can be directly activated by electrical stimulation (ESB). In its strongest form, this Reward Event Theory (RET) claims that all positive motivation, primary and learned, is functionally dependent on these reward events. Some of the empirical evidence is reviewed which either supports or challenges RET. The paper examines the implications of RET for the concepts of 'motivation', 'desire' and 'reward' or 'pleasure'. (...) It is argued (1) that a 'causal base' as opposed to a functional' concept of motivation has theoretical advantages; (2) that a causal distinction between the focus' and the 'anchor' of desire suggests an ineliminable 'opacity' of desire; and (3) that some affective concept, such as 'pleasure', should play a key role in psychological explanation, distinct from that of motivational (or cognitive) concepts. A concept of 'reward' or 'pleasure' as intrinsically positive affect is defended, and contrasted with the more 'operational' definitions of 'reward' in some of the hypotheses of Roy Wise. (shrink)

The _Physics_ is a foundational work of western philosophy, and the crucial one for understanding Aristotle's views on matter, form, essence, causation, movement, space, and time. This richly annotated, scrupulously accurate, and consistent translation makes it available to a contemporary English reader as no other does—in part because it fits together seamlessly with other closely associated works in the New Hackett Aristotle series, such as the _Metaphysics_, _De Anima_, and forthcoming _De Caelo_ and _On Coming to Be and Passing Away_. (...) Eventually the series will include all of Aristotle's works. Sequentially numbered endnotes provide the information most needed at each juncture, while a detailed Index of Terms indicates places where focused discussion of key notions occurs. An illuminating general Introduction describes the book that lies ahead, explaining what sort of work it is and what sorts of evidence it relies on. (shrink)

Es, sin duda, Bartolomé Esteban Murillo uno de los pintores sevillanos con más relevancia universal. Y precisamente este año, en el que nos hallamos celebrando el cuarto centenario de su nacimiento, presentamos este trabajo en el que deseamos mostrar cómo también en sus cuadros se plasmó la figura y el pensamiento de aquel gran santo y Doctor de la Iglesia que es conocido incluso por quienes ignoran el cristianismo o no tienen familiaridad con él. De esta forma, instamos al lector (...) a descubrir, a través de dicho trabajo, cómo el brillo de San Agustín de Hipona acrisola también los lienzos que el maestro sevillano pintara para el convento agustino de su ciudad natal. (shrink)

Es irrefutable que el hombre siempre ha mentido, algo que —sin duda— preocupa y ocupa nuestra atención. Y es éste el principal motivo que nos ha inducido a la elaboración del presente trabajo, trabajo que —tomando como puntos de apoyo, principalmente, a san Agustín y algunos documentos magisteriales— tan sólo pretende la reflexión y la reconsideración por parte del lector de tan humano “dilema”: la mentira. Por otro lado, es el obispo de Hipona la figura inevitable en el contexto del (...) cristianismo, figura que a través de dos tratados —De mendacio y Contra mendacium— nos ayudará a entender y comprender este “grave problema moral”. (shrink)

El papa Francisco, a través de la bula Misericordiae Vultus, ha convocado a toda la Iglesia para la celebración jubilar extraordinaria de la misericordia. Dicha celebración dará comienzo el próximo día 8 de diciembre del 2015 con la solemne apertura de la Puerta Santa o de la Misericordia en San Pedro. Una vez que todos los fieles la hayan atravesado experimentando “el amor de Dios que consuela, que perdona y ofrece esperanza”, se cerrará en la festividad de Jesucristo Rey del (...) Universo. Por tanto, es un año en el que se nos invita a reflexionar y meditar entorno a esta gran “virtud”. En este trabajo, pues, reflexionaremos sobre la identidad filosófica y teológica de la virtud de la misericordia. (shrink)

A lo largo de la historia de la Iglesia, podemos comprobar cómo el magisterio agustiniano se convirtió en una constante, que perdura hasta nuestros días. Así, san Agustín ha sido una “inagotable fuente” de inspiración tanto para Pontífices como para numerosos documentos eclesiales. De esta forma, en el presente artículo analizamos —entre otros aspectos— tanto la encíclica Lumen Fidei como la Nueva edición del Directorio para la vida y ministerio de los presbíteros, ambos documentos influenciados e ilustrados con el magisterio (...) del santo obispo de Hipona, magisterio que —como bien señaló el beato Juan Pablo II en su encíclica Augustinum Hipponensem— debe continuar “en la Iglesia y en el mundo a beneficio de la cultura y de la fe”. (shrink)

The Walmart Company is one of the favorite punching bags of market critics. They accuse this firm of underpaying employees, dealing unfairly with customers, exploiting suppliers, and bankrupting small competitors. Various political jurisdictions have banned this firm from their environs, either implicitly or explicitly. The present article offers a more nuanced position on the behemoth from Arkansas. Although it has some flaws, there is an overwhelming case to be made in its behalf as an employer, competitor, purchaser, benefactor of customers.