Andres Rodriguez

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.

François Mauriac desarrolló fundamentalmente su producción literaria en la primera mitad del siglo pasado, un periodo marcado por las dos Guerras Mundiales en una Francia en creciente proceso de secularización. Así las cosas, con motivo del cincuenta aniversario de su fallecimiento la pretensión de este trabajo es hacer emerger la figura de Mauriac como apologeta que, desde el ámbito literario, defendió algunos de los principales postulados católicos cuestionados por el alma moderna. En efecto, el premio Nobel de literatura pertenece a esa constelación de autores católicos que, profundizando en las raíces del Cristianismo, intentan dar una salida a la crisis de la Modernidad, cimentada fundamentalmente en el positivismo y el materialismo. De hecho, veremos cómo plantea el problema del mal en el mundo y la solución al mismo desde el ámbito de la caridad por medio de mártires inmolados. Asimismo, asistiremos a la crítica sistemática del novelista francés contra el antitestimonio cristiano o contra el fariseísmo religioso como elementos clave de su pedagogía apologética.

RESUMEN Largamente desatendida o malinterpretada, la noción de caos en la filosofía de Nietzsche es una pieza constitutiva de la particular concepción del ser que este autor habría dejado apenas esbozada. El artículo se propone elaborar este concepto en la obra nietzscheana, siguiendo algunas de las metáforas que lo iluminan. Desde allí se busca plantear los rasgos centrales de una ontologia del caos, de sesgo no metafísico, que, al afirmar el carácter acontecimental de la realidad, puede verse como precursora de la ontología hermenéutica contemporánea. ABSTRACT The notion of chaos, which has long been neglected or misinterpreted, is a constitutive element of a peculiar conception of being that the philosopher only had time to outline. The objective of this article is to elaborate on this concept in Nietzschean philosophy, guided by some of the metaphors that shed light on it. This serves as the basis to set forth the main characteristics of a non-metaphysical ontology of chaos that asserts the eventful nature of reality and can thus be seen as a precursor of contemporary hermeneutic ontology.

Contrary to the view maintained by many philosophers that science employs the deductive testing of hypotheses, observational natural sciences such as paleoanthropology and the earth sciences apply a scientific methodology consisting in the proposal of hypotheses which are best fitted to the available empirical data, i.e. which best explain the data. Observational natural sciences are predominantly empirical. They are grounded in observation, and they do not implement any Popperian deductive testing of hypotheses. Theoretical natural sciences such as mathematical physics also apply inference to the best explanation for the introduction of significant concepts and hypotheses. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate that in contemporary science, the use of abductive reasoning continues to be as effective as ever