Luis Ramos-Alarcon

Some scholars have understood that Spinoza’s extreme rationalism, nominalism, conventionalism, and rejection of a semantic theory of truth make his philosophy incapable to use language for philosophical and scientific purposes; insofar he considered language a source of inadequate knowledge, falsity, and error. Thus Spinoza finds contradiction in his inevitable use of language to express his philosophy. This paper has four aims: first, propose an explanation on why language is inadequate knowledge for Spinoza; second, present differences between inadequacy, falsity, and error in language; third, argue on the Spinozian use of the geometrical method as a solution for the adequate use of language in philosophical and scientific work; finally, show the problems and limits of this solution for metaphysical discussions.

For Spinoza’s epistemology, an image is an idea that represents an external body as actually existent. This kind of knowledge is the only source of inadequate knowledge, falsity, and error. On the contrary, reason is adequate knowledge because it comprehends common notions, i.e, properties of different things. Intuition is also adequate knowledge because it conceives formal essences of singular things. The main example is the genetic definition of a sphere, an adequate knowledge form by the power of thinking of the mind, without regard to existing extramental spheres. From these differences, some scholars conclude that imagination is always negative and should not deal with reason and intuition. But this conclusion will ban Spinoza’s epistemology from having adequate knowledge of existing individuals, such as Moses and the Hebrew State. In front of this view, this paper defends three theses: firstly, that the difference between the three kinds of knowledge is of genus, not of degree. Secondly, that adequate knowledge for Spinoza is a generic knowledge, i.e., insofar as S knows P insofar S deduces the effects, consequences, or properties of P. Thirdly, that adequate knowledge can include imagination through the proper use of the geometric method. In this case, imagination offers data to reason and intuition for having adequate knowledge of singular things that actually existed.

Resumen: Spinoza afirma que las decisiones, elecciones y acciones de un agente son necesarias porque están determinadas causalmente. ¿Acaso los seres humanos no son agentes morales? ¿son sólo eslabones de una cadena de causas cuyo curso no pueden controlar y que los exime de las consecuencias de sus actos, así como de premios y castigos? ¿ser un individuo libre significa aceptar pasivamente lo que ocurre y abandonar la pretensión de modificarlo? Este artículo responde a estas preguntas mediante la distinción en la obra spinoziana de dos conceptos de libertad, la verdadera libertad y el libre albedrío, así como con la distinción entre la responsabilidad civil fundada en el concepto de potestas humana -y no en la verdadera libertad, aunque la posibilita-.: Spinoza sustains that the agents' decisions are necessary because they are causally determined. But then, are humans really moral agents? Is it possible that they are only passengers in a train of causes, whose course they cannot control and exempts them from the consequences of their acts, of reward or punishment? Is accepting whatever happens and quitting the aspiration of changing things the hallmark of the free man? This paper answers these questions by distinguishing two concepts of freedom, real freedom and free will, as well as two concepts of responsibility. Civil responsibility is grounded in free will, whereas moral responsibility is not grounded in true freedom, but in human power.

The main objective of this article is to determine how Delfim Santos positions himself in relation to what I designated as the question of the limits of the application of causality in science. With this objective in mind, I divided the article into three sections: in the first, I show how Delfim Santos exposes these two opposing positions, namely, on the one hand, the universalist position, and on the other hand, the rejectionist position; in the second, I present Delfim Santos’ critique of these two opposing positions, namely, both the critique he weaves of the universalist position and the critique he weaves of the rejectionist position; in the third, I present Delfim Santos’ position in relation to the universalist position and the rejectionist position.

The ideas here sketched they constitute a theoretical-general, inspired proposal of character, mainly, in the thought philosophical Latin American of such authors as: Paulo will Fry, Juan Carlos Scannone, Enrique Dussel and Alejandro Moreno among others. We consider that the answers around the particular situation that the Latin American Sociology lives should be linked with the demands that it demands the complex social reality. With the result that our proposal is guided in that address. In such a sense, our dissertation is structured in the following way: The Eternal Youth of the Sociology: –en allusion to the thought weberiano - aspect in which the transcendency is rescued, as condition to overcome the spirit positivista and to assume the new emergencies discursive present in this discipline. The Inheritance, Challenges and Perspectives: In this point it is interrogated and, at the same time, one responds about the road that could traffic the Latin American Sociology. The Episteme like Town and the Otredad like Episteme: These ideas are based respectively in a rupture with the modern scientific rationality, placing as main elements to the community fellow, the talkative relationship and the action heuristic hermenéutica like via to approach to the complex social reality, to the search of the knowledge.