Este trabajo quedó segundo en la IV Olimpiada de filosofía que organiza FICUM en la modalidad de secundaria y bachillerato para promocionar la filosofía entre los jóvenes.

Como en la psicología del individuo, en la pólis se encuentran dos principios contrapuestos, las pasiones y la ley. En los animales gregarios existe también el factor político que lleva a trabajar a muchos por un fin común. Pero en el hombre hay una diferencia en su actividad política, es decir, la ley que proviene de la razón y que no se puede expresar sin palabras. Por ello Aristóteles, a diferencia de Platón, otorga una función constructiva a los sofistas, como (...) técnicos de la retórica que es necesaria para establecer la ley en la ciudad. La política es la ciencia superior que articula la ética y la retórica para que los hombres en la ciudad puedan llegar al fin último, la felicidad. No hay, para Aristóteles, un fin exterior metapolítico, que pueda satisfacer separadamente los componentes superiores de la psyché humana. As on a person’s psychology, there are in the pólis two opposing principles, passions and law. In gregarious animals, there is also a political factor that leads many individuals to work for a common purpose. But in man there is a difference in his political activity, i.e., the law that comes from reason and cannot be expressed without words. For this reason, Aristotle, unlike Plato, gives a constructive function to Sophists, as experts on rhetoric, which is necessary to establish law in the city. Politics is a superior science that articulates ethics and rhetoric in order that men in the city can reach the ultimate goal, happiness. For Aristotle, there is not an external metapolitical objective, which could separately satisfy the upper components of the human psyche. (shrink)

El autor de este artículo lee el Apologeticum de Tertuliano como un texto de transición ideológica entre los primeros escritos mesiánicos del cristianismo y la teología política del siglo IV, i.e. una obra que fusiona teología imperial y cristianismo. Dejando de lado las disputas teológicas con el judaísmo, Tertuliano propone una discusión frontal con los romanos sobre la relación del concepto de divinidad con el poder político y quiere mostrar que la teología y la ética de los cristianos son mucho (...) más apropiadas para una realidad como el Imperio romano que las que ha impuesto la tradición politeísta. En este razonamiento se destaca la correspondencia entre monoteísmo y monarquía universal. The author of this paper reads Apologeticum by Tertullian as a text of ideological transition between the early messianic Christian writings and political fourth century theology, i.e. a work that combines Imperial theology and Christianity. Leaving apart the theological disputes with Judaism, Tertullian proposes a frontal discussion with the Romans on the relationship of the concept of divinity with political power and wants to show that theology and Christian ethics are much more appropriate for a reality as Roman Empire which has imposed the polytheistic tradition. His argumentation stands out the reciprocation between monotheism and universal monarchy. (shrink)

El presente artículo estudia las representaciones de mujeres con VIH/sida, en el libro Tiempos del SIDA. Relatos de la vida real, de Myriam Francis. El trabajo inicia con un análisis sobre la exclusión de los sujetos femeninos de la literatura “seropositiva” latinoamericana. Se plantea que las pocas representaciones que existen se enfocan en “mujeres sospechosas”, lo cual se repite, hasta cierto punto, en los textos de Francis seleccionados: “La última puerta”, “La viuda alegre” y “La chica alegre”. Luego, se ofrece (...) una explicación sobre el contexto en el que surgen las historias, un “pabellón-moridero” que se describe más bien como un espacio ameno, el cual, sin embargo, enfatiza la tragicidad que rodea a cada “caso”. Después, se estudian los tres relatos mencionados, en los que se mueven los símbolos primarios del mal (la mancilla, el pecado y la culpabilidad), de manera que una mujer es representada como una “víctima inocente” y otras, como “víctimas culpables” (fundamentalmente por sus “estilos de vida nocivos”). Finalmente, el trabajo concluye que la narrativa de Francis moviliza algunos principios de la “teoría de la degeneración”, para explicar las situaciones experimentadas por los personajes femeninos y ofrecer un mensaje didáctico-moralizante. (shrink)

"Filone di Alessandria, La filosofia mosaica: La creazione del mondo, secondo Mosè, trad, de C. Kraus Reggiani, Le allegorie delle Leggi, trad. di R.Radice; Prefazioni, apparati e commentari di R. Radice; Monografia introduttiva di G. Reale e R. Radice, Milano, 1987 (Rusconi, 580 páginas)." published on 30 Mar 1990 by Brill.

En este artículo se presenta una nueva traducción al español del breve opúsculo De mystica theologia junto con una introducción al texto. La introducción se concentra en el análisis de algunos puntos que son especialmente útiles para entender el texto en cuestión: su historia y su significado para el neoplatonismo y, aun más importante, su relevancia en términos de una exposición sumamente original de la doctrina cristiana desde la perspectiva de un neoplatónico; la importancia de este texto en la filosofía (...) contemporánea también se hace notar; y, finalmente, su crucial importancia para la así llamada “teología negativa”. (shrink)

In this research work a novel two-step system for anomaly detection is presented and tested over several real datasets. In the first step the novel Exploratory Projection Pursuit, Beta Hebbian Learning algorithm, is applied over each dataset, either to reduce the dimensionality of the original dataset or to face nonlinear datasets by generating a new subspace of the original dataset with lower, or even higher, dimensionality selecting the right activation function. Finally, in the second step Principal Component Analysis anomaly detection (...) is applied to the new subspace to detect the anomalies and improve its classification capabilities. This new approach has been tested over several different real datasets, in terms of number of variables, number of samples and number of anomalies. In almost all cases, the novel approach obtained better results in terms of area under the curve with similar standard deviation values. In case of computational cost, this improvement is only remarkable when complexity of the dataset in terms of number of variables is high. (shrink)

We analyse the relationship between applicability and effectiveness of legal norms from a philosophical perspective. In particular, we distinguish between two concepts of applicability. The external applicability of norms refers to institutional duties; a norm N is externally applicable if and only if a judge is legally obliged to apply N to some case c. Internal applicability refers instead to the sphere of validity of legal norms. A norm N is internally applicable to actions regulated by its sphere of validity. (...) We also explore the consequences of a thesis which maintains that applicability restricts the concept of effectiveness, so that only applicable norms can be considered effective. Our analysis illustrates that a proper reconstruction of the concept of applicability is of great importance not only for understanding the concept of effectiveness but also for providing insight into the nature of law. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to defend, contra Fodor and Piattelli-Palmarini (F&PP), that the theory of natural selection (NS) is a perfectly bona fide empirical unified explanatory theory. F&PP claim there is nothing non-truistic, counterfactual-supporting, of an “adaptive” character and common to different explanations of trait evolution. In his debate with Fodor, and in other works, Sober defends NS but claims that, compared with classical mechanics (CM) and other standard theories, NS is peculiar in that its explanatory models are (...) a priori (a trait shared with few other theories). We argue that NS provides perfectly bona fide adaptive explanations of phenotype evolution, unified by a common natural-selection guiding principle. First, we introduce the debate and reply to F&PP’s main argument against NS. Then, by reviewing different examples and analyzing Fisher’s model in detail, we show that NS explanations of phenotypic evolution share a General Natural Selection Principle. Third, by elaborating an analogy with CM, we argue against F&PP’s claim that such a principle would be a mere truism and thus explanatorily useless, and against Sober’s thesis that NS models/explanations have a priori components that are not present in CM and other common empirical theories. Irrespective of differences in other respects, the NS guiding principle has the same epistemic status as other guiding principles in other highly unified theories such as CM. We argue that only by pointing to the guiding principle-driven nature that it shares with CM and other highly unified theories, something no-one has done yet in this debate, one can definitively show that NS is not defective in F&PP’s sense: in the respects relevant to the debate, Natural Selection is as defective and as epistemically peculiar as Classical Mechanics and other never questioned theories. (shrink)

In this study, a hybrid model based on intelligent techniques is developed to predict the active power generated in a bioclimatic house by a low power wind turbine. Contrary to other researches that predict the generated power taking into account the speed and the direction of the wind, the model developed in this paper only uses the speed of the wind, measured mainly in a weather station from the government meteorological agency (MeteoGalicia). The wind speed is measured at different heights, (...) against the usual measurements in others researches, which uses the wind speed and the direction measured in a weather station on the wind turbine nacelle. The prediction is performed 30 minutes ahead, what ensures that the Building Management System knows the energy generated by the low power wind turbine 30 minutes before, and it can adapt the consumption of different equipment in the house to optimize the power use. The main objective is to allow the Building Management System to optimize the uses of energy, taking into account the predicted amount of energy that will be produced and the energy consumed in the house. The developed model uses a hybrid topology with four clusters to improve the prediction, achieving an error lower than 6.5% for Mean Absolute Error measured in a final test. To perform this test, part of the original dataset was isolated from the beginning of the training process to check the model with a dataset that is not used before, simulating the model as it is receiving new data. (shrink)

The epistemic status of Natural Selection has seemed intriguing to biologists and philosophers since the very beginning of the theory to our present times. One prominent contemporary example is Elliott Sober, who claims that NS, and some other theories in biology, and maybe in economics, are peculiar in including explanatory models/conditionals that are a priori in a sense in which explanatory models/conditionals in Classical Mechanics and most other standard theories are not. Sober’s argument focuses on some “would promote” sentences that (...) according to him, play a central role in NS explanations and are both causal and a priori. Lange and Rosenberg criticize Sober arguing that, though there may be some unspecific a priori causal claims, there are not a priori causal claims that specify particular causal factors. Although we basically agree with Lange and Rosenberg’s criticism, we think it remains silent about a second important element in Sober’s dialectics, namely his claim that, contrary to what happens in mechanics, in NS explanatory conditionals are a priori, and that this is so in quite specific explanatory models. In this paper we criticize this second element of Sober’s argument by analyzing what we take to be the four possible interpretations of Sober’s claim, and argue that, terminological preferences aside, the possible senses in which explanatory models in NS can qualify, or include elements that can qualify, as a priori, also apply to CM and other standard, highly unified theories. We conclude that this second claim is unsound, or at least that more needs to be said in order to sustain that NS explanatory models are a priori in a sense in which CM models are not. (shrink)