Lorenzo Peña

Graham Priest's book In Contradiction is a bold defense of the existence of true contradictions. Although Priest's case is impressive, and many of his arguments are correct, his approach is not the only one allowing for true contradictions. As against Priest's, there is at least one contradictorialist approach which establishes a link between true contradictions and degrees of truth. All in all, such an alternative is more conservative, closer to mainstream analytical philosophy. The two approaches differ as regards the floodgate problem. Priest espouses a confinement policy banning contradictions except in a few special domains, particularly those of pure semantics and set-theory , whereas the alternative approach admits two negations -- natural or weak negation and strong negation, the latter being classical; accordingly, the alternative approach prohibits any contradiction involving strong negation, thus providing a syntactic test of what contradictions have to be rejected

Phonemes are minimal segments within the spoken message whose presence is relevant for distinguishing one message from a different one with another meaning. Each phoneme underlies different phonetic realizations. What sets a phoneme from another is fuzzy cluster of the fuzzy features. Thus the study of phonemic structures is likely to have much to gain from a gradualistic approach. Through a gradualistic treatment synchronic phonology could tally with the diachronic study in a simpler way than is customary. In this connection, an obstacle to be overcome is a widespread adherence to classical logic.

El derecho a vivir en pareja no es la mera facultad de contraer matrimonio, sino un derecho a vivir en una unión dual de individuos adultos para la felicidad mutua, compartiendo las cargas y disfrutando juntos de los goces de la vida. Tiene una doble cara de derecho de libertad y de bienestar, aunque es principalmente lo primero. Para respetarlo plenamente, la ley tiene que brindar un marco adecuado, que permita y ampare la comunidad matrimonial, regulando correctamente en ella los derechos y deberes concomitantes (sin los cuales se vaciaría el derecho genérico del art. 16.1 de la Declaración Universal de los Derechos Humanos). La legislación española está lejos de respetar ese canon. Para solucionar ese problema, propongo una reforma que ofrezca una escala de pactos de vínculo conyugal, con diferentes grados de compromiso recíproco. Lamentablemente es seguro que el legislador no seguirá este consejo.