Leandro Gaitán

El artículo examina los desafíos que enfrenta actualmente la familia como consecuencia de la confluencia de diversas corrientes de pensamiento de raíz moderna y posmoderna que promueven el tránsito hacia la posthumanidad, cuestionando las nociones tradicionales de naturaleza humana, género, parentesco, autoridad, jerarquía y, en última instancia, la noción misma de familia. Dichas corrientes parten de una supuesta necesidad de deconstruir y resignificar esas categorías, proponiendo modelos alternativos de familia o incluso formas de convivencia que implican su completa abolición. Frente a este panorama, el filósofo francés Fabrice Hadjadj propone una ontología del don y de la encarnación que reivindica la diferencia entre los sexos y la diferencia entre generaciones como fundamentos del ser familiar. El objetivo del artículo es mostrar que Hadjadj ofrece una respuesta crítica y humanizadora ante el intento contemporáneo de metamorfosear lo humano y disolver la filiación.

The philosopher Byung-Chul Han affirms that the present age reduces the human being to a performance-machine, and that, because of this reduction, the type of disease that characterizes it this age is neuronal. In the present article, I argue that Han’s analysis is correct but incomplete. Behind this reductionism, which leads to neuropathologies of different types, lies another type of pathology that the philosopher Eric Voegelin calls ‘pneumopathology’—disease of the spirit. The transhumanist view of human enhancement deepens this reduction and shows that the pneumopathology that blights today’s society is in a process of unprecedented chronification. To justify this thesis, I first explain the connection between human enhancement and the achievement imperative denounced by Han; I then analyze the Voegelian category of pneumopathology to show its value for an ontological-historical understanding of human enhancement.

The new mechanistic philosophy seeks to identify and explain the mechanisms of various phenomena, including their overall organization and the interactions between the individualized components. This paper argues that among the phenomena that can be approached within the new mechanistic framework are near-death experiences, which can be included within the vast range of experiences that are grouped under the category of religious experience. Such experiences involve a complex set of cognitive, affective, and behavioural processes. Since studying such experiences is far from methodologically simple, we try to show the feasibility of applying the mechanistic explanation to near-death experiences. While some scholars (such as Egil Asprem and Ann Taves) argue that mechanistic explanation can shed new light on the explanation of religion, we instead emphasize neglected limits of such an explanation, as well as its epistemic-methodological advantages in comparison with alternative explanatory models, especially the models proposed by Michael Marsh, Frederick S. Barrett and Roland R. Griffiths.

Los avances de las últimas dos décadas en el estudio del sistema nervioso y en el desarrollo de neuro-tecnología parecen justificar las elevadas expectativas en lo que a este campo concierne. No obstante, cada vez son más los autores que advierten, desde dentro y fuera de la neurociencia, que es excesivo tal grado de optimismo así como perjudicial el neuro-esencialismo que genera. En el presente artículo analizamos el origen y el papel de las expectativas neurocientíficas. En las conclusiones defendemos, primero, que las principales causas no son las evidencias y las teorías científicas, como suele pensarse y, segundo, que precisamente esta generalizada falsa creencia perjudica seriamente el avance científico y el progreso social

The present work is developed within the frame of so-called critical neuroscience. The aim of this article is to explain the transition from a kind of neuroscience understood as a strict scientific discipline, possessing a methodology and a specific praxis, to a kind of neuroscience that has been transformed into a meta-narrative with totalizing claims. In particular, we identify and examine eleven catalysts for such a transition: 1) a lack of communication between scientists and journalists; 2) the abuse of information by the sensational press; 3) the acceptance of specific philosophical approaches by a wide range of scientists; 4) the widespread transmission of two conceptual mistakes: a) an identification between methodological and ontological reductionism and b) the mereological fallacy; 5) the influence of post-Cartesian philosophical thinking in the scientific community; 6) an overwhelming scientific hyper-specialization; 7) the illegitimate transfer of authority from humanities to the sciences; 8) an inbuilt human preference for visual data; 9) economic interests; 10) scientific utopianism; and 11) the new self-help movements and their alliance with neuro-enhancement. Finally, our essay seeks to draw attention to the most damaging consequences for both science and human ways of living.