Andres Rodriguez

El presente artículo desarrolla la comprensión marceliana de la esperanza como fruto de una experiencia de comunión intersubjetiva. De tal modo que la esperanza nos abre un nuevo horizonte de sentido para el itinerario vital, anunciando ya una plenitud intersubjetiva imperecedera. Así, podremos reconocer una fuente de renovación personal y comunitaria en la vivencia de la intersubjetividad, como condición metafísica de la existencia personal que responde a la profunda exigencia de trascendencia del hombre.

This article defends a teleological approach which is compatible with our scientific image. It is held that organisms can be depicted as autonomous systems in which occurs autorregulation processes and exhibits a teleological behaviour oriented to an equilibrium. Furthermore, the aforementioned systems are well depicted as mechanical ones. In sum, finality can be understood as a search of an equilibrium by the natural systems in their adaptation to environment. So, we conciliate finalism and mechanicism.

John Worrall ofreció hace veinte años una forma no típica, supuestamente viable, de realismo científico a la que llamó realismo estructural. Se suponía que éste era una alternativa al realismo típico y una forma viable de realismo. Las cuestiones principales que discuto en este artículo son lo que denomino los dos dogmas del realismo estructural: la idea de que hay retención de estructura en el cambio teórico, y la idea de que las estructuras teóricas describen el mundo. Arthur Fine proclamó que el realismo científico había muerto. Yo afirmo que el intento de Worrall de resucitar el realismo científico ha fracasado

I present an outline of a normative and non selectionist theory capable of ascribing functional statements to biological items. Biological items are ussually exemplified by the organs as well as traits or behaviours. But we can consider representations too. In fact, my proposal is focused towards a teleosemantical theory of mental content. The teleosemantic approach explains the content of beliefs in terms of the biological functions of those states. Usually, teleosemantical theories of mental representation either ellaborate previously a general theory of functions for biological items, this is the case for Millikan, Neander or Price, orassume a previous selectionist one, as Papineau does. But these proposals are frequently adaptationist in order to keep normatitvity in whatever functional adscription. The recent contributions to the state of the art show the problems of this kind of selectionist view. But they don’t consider the problem of normativity in functional adscriptions. And this problem become important when we pay attention to mental representations as biological facts. I propose an outline of a nonselectionist nor adaptationist account of biological functions capable of keeping normativity. My account is suitable to biological traits, in general, and mental representations characterized in terms of biological functions.