Miguel Gonzalez

Among the various contemporary schools of moral thinking, consequence-based ethics, as opposed to rule-based, seems to have a good acceptance among professionals such as software engineers. But naïve consequentialism is intellectually too weak to serve as a practical guide in the profession. Besides, the complexity of software systems makes it very hard to know in advance the consequences that will derive from professional activities in the production of software. Therefore, following the spirit of well-known codes of ethics such as the ACM/IEEE’s, we advocate for a more solid position in the ethical education of software engineers, which we call ‘moderate deontologism’, that takes into account both rules and consequences to assess the goodness of actions, and at the same time pays an adequate consideration to the absolute values of human dignity. In order to educate responsible professionals, however, this position should be complemented with a pedagogical approach to virtue ethics.

In this paper we present the authors’ experience of teaching a course in Ethics for Engineers, which has been delivered four times in three different universities in Spain and Chile. We begin by presenting the material context of the course, and especially the intellectual background of the participating students, in terms of their previous understanding of philosophy in general, and of ethics in particular. Next we set out the objectives of the course and the main topics addressed, as well as the methodology and teaching resources employed to have students achieve a genuine philosophical reflection on the ethical aspects of the profession, starting from their own mindset as engineers. Finally we offer some results based on opinion surveys of the students, as well as a more personal assessment by the authors, recapitulating the most significant achievements of the course and indicating its underlying Socratic structure

Is ethics a computable function? Can machines learn ethics like humans do? If teaching consists in no more than programming, training, indoctrinating… and if ethics is merely following a code of conduct, then yes, we can teach ethics to algorithmic machines. But if ethics is not merely about following a code of conduct or about imitating the behavior of others, then an approach based on computing outcomes, and on the reduction of ethics to the compilation and application of a set of rules, either a priori or learned, misses the point. Our intention is not to solve the technical problem of machine ethics, but to learn something about human ethics, and its rationality, by reflecting on the ethics that can and should be implemented in machines. Any machine ethics implementation will have to face a number of fundamental or conceptual problems, which in the end refer to philosophical questions, such as: what is a human being (or more generally, what is a worthy being); what is human intentional acting; and how are intentional actions and their consequences morally evaluated. We are convinced that a proper understanding of ethical issues in AI can teach us something valuable about ourselves, and what it means to lead a free and responsible ethical life, that is, being good people beyond merely “following a moral code”. In the end we believe that rationality must be seen to involve more than just computing, and that value rationality is beyond numbers. Such an understanding is a required step to recovering a renewed rationality of ethics, one that is urgently needed in our highly technified society.

Patina is the word used for the green or brown film formed on the surface of old bronze, an excess of which can mask the true characteristics of the original masterpiece. Filippo Baldinucci used the word patina in a modern sense for first time in his book “Tuscan Vocabulary of the Art of Design”. Metaphors have been part of philosophical speech since the time of Plato. This figure of speech is used to attempt to provide a sensitive presence of an idea to improve understanding and to make a more vivid perception of that concept. On analysing the creative process of contemporary re-search on health topics and its further dissemination, we defend the epistemological thesis that there is always some degree of patina on an original article and this may obscure the underlying scientific work. Conclusion: We consider that patina in scientific papers is very different from the concept of epidemiological bias. We think that any researcher who reads an original article acts as a restorer of knowledge. If a reader is aware of the existence of scientific patina, that reader will know how to look through it and see the masterpiece hidden underneath.

Disregard of gender and of women’s contributions in the higher education curriculum is still a widespread phenomenon. Building on feminist institutionalism, this article explores the forms and types of resistance that efforts to engender the higher education curriculum must contend with and discusses the ways in which resistance to curricular reform is entrenched in a web of both gender-specific and apparently gender-neutral academic informal rules. In doing so, the authors use empirical evidence collected by an action-research project undertaken at a faculty of political and social sciences in a Catalan public university. The Spanish case is intriguing because mainstreaming gender in higher education has been prescribed by various national and regional laws that are nonetheless poorly implemented. The article also reflects on the positive feedback loop action-research projects can facilitate within gendered institutions such as universities and pinpoints the role of feminist agency in counteracting resistance to institutional change.

Resumen En el presente trabajo se analiza la breve alusión que Hegel realiza a la cruz de Cristo en el parágrafo 564 de la Enciclopedia a partir de las Lecciones de filosofía de la religión en sus cuatro diferentes versiones. La tesis central del texto sostiene que si bien el tratamiento de la muerte de Dios en cruz corresponde en el sistema de Hegel al momento de la finitud del Espíritu absoluto, hay en él una reflexión existencial que no puede ser pasada por alto y que en ella hay elementos que remiten inequívocamente a la teología de la cruz de Lutero.In this work the brief mention that Hegel makes to the cross of Christ at paragraph 564 of the Encyclopedia is analyzed from the Lectures on Philosophy of Religion in its four different versions. The central thesis of the work is that, although the treatment of the death of God at the cross corresponds in the Hegelian system to the moment of finitude of the absolute Spirit, there is also in it an existential reflection that should be overlooked and elements that refer unequivocally to Luther's theology of the cross.

El siguiente artículo tiene por objetivo mostrar la mutua correspondencia entre experiencia e historicidad en la obra de Hans-Georg Gadamer. La experiencia es entendida como el movimiento fundamental de la existencia histórica, la que articula las diversas esferas de la acción humana. La experiencia hermenéutica pone de manifiesto que el comprender no puede fundarse en un procedimiento metódico, sino en la forma del existir situado en el mundo. El acto hermenéutico es entendido como un continuo proceso de apropiación, que se realiza mediante el lenguaje, y donde se van actualizando nuevos significados que develan el carácter aconteciente y móvil de la interpretación. Por ello, la historicidad de la comprensión será el principio hermenéutico fundamental que excluye la posibilidad de una conciencia histórica absoluta, a favor de una “conciencia de la repercusión histórica” (wirkungsgeschtliches Bewußtseins). The following article aims at showing the mutual correspondence between experience and historicity in the work of Hans-Georg Gadamer. Experience is understood as the fundamental movement of the historical existence, whichvarious spheres ofhuman action. The hermeneutic experience shows thatnot lie in methodical procedure, but in the way of existence in the world. The hermeneuticis understood as a continuing process that is carried out through language and where new meanings are updated, that reveal mobile characteristics of the interpretation. Therefore, the understanding the hermeneutical principle which excludes possibility ofabsolute consciousness, in favor of a historically-effected consciousness (wirkungsgeschtliches Bewußtseins)

An engineer who becomes an educator in a school of software engineering has the mission to teach how to design and construct software systems, therein applying his or her knowledge and expertise. However, due to their engineering background, engineers may forget that educating a person is not the same as designing a machine, since a machine has a well-defined goal, whilst a person is capable to self-propose his or her own objectives. The ethical implications are clear: educating a free person must leave space for creativity and self-determination in his or her own discovery of the way towards personal and professional fulfillment, which cannot consist only in achieving goals selected by others. We present here an argument that is applicable to most fields of engineering. However, the dis-analogy between educating students and programming robots may have a particular appeal to software engineers and computer scientists. We think the consideration of three different stages in the educational process may be useful to engineers when they act as educators. We claim that the three stages are essential to engineering education. In particular, education is incomplete if the third stage is not reached. Moreover, mentoring is incompatible with an educational assessment framework that considers the goals of the engineer are always given by others. In our view, then, an integral education is not only beyond programming the behavior of students, but also beyond having them reach those given goals.

In this paper we shall consider how the globalization of media has destroyed the metaphysical link between the nation as political entity the nation cultural unit, a link which was postulated by the Romantic philosophical tradition and that at the same time has been deeply engrained in the common sense idea of national identity. The paper has three sections. In the first one we consider the two meanings of the concept "nation" and show that their possible aiffinity is only understandable taking into account the relevance of the spatial and temporal determinations of existence. We deal with such kinds of determination in the second section; finally, m the third one we suggest that the political and cultural dynamics of the current intemational order have subverted those determinations and have fostered a new vision of existence in convergence with the so-called American way of life and, by the same token, weakened the traditional idea of nation.

Resumen En el presente trabajo se analiza la breve alusión que Hegel realiza a la cruz de Cristo en el parágrafo 564 de la Enciclopedia a partir de las Lecciones de filosofía de la religión en sus cuatro diferentes versiones. La tesis central del texto sostiene que si bien el tratamiento de la muerte de Dios en cruz corresponde en el sistema de Hegel al momento de la finitud del Espíritu absoluto, hay en él una reflexión existencial que no puede ser pasada por alto y que en ella hay elementos que remiten inequívocamente a la teología de la cruz de Lutero.In this work the brief mention that Hegel makes to the cross of Christ at paragraph 564 of the Encyclopedia is analyzed from the Lectures on Philosophy of Religion in its four different versions. The central thesis of the work is that, although the treatment of the death of God at the cross corresponds in the Hegelian system to the moment of finitude of the absolute Spirit, there is also in it an existential reflection that should be overlooked and elements that refer unequivocally to Luther's theology of the cross.

We report a scanning tunnelling microscopy investigation of the emission of dislocations around nanoindentations in the form of dislocation arrangements previously called hillocks , consisting of two pairs of Shockley partial dislocations, each encompassing a stacking fault. The spatial arrangement and size distribution of hillocks around the nanoindentation traces are studied. We show that standard dislocation theory for an isotropic continuum can be used to describe the stability of the hillocks, their size and spatial distribution and the broadening of the corresponding extended dislocations near the surface. A model is proposed in which hillocks originate from the split into dislocations partials of primary perfect dislocation loops punched into the crystal by the scanning tunnelling microscope tip. This model implies the operation of a novel dislocation mechanism involving long-range transport of matter across the surface

El espectáculo cinematográfico Cinerama es un referente en la tecnología de la gran pantalla. Gracias a Fred Waller y Hazard Reeves, Cinerama elevó su popularidad. Este hecho derivó en la creación de pabellones móviles itinerantes. Cinesa inició en España el desarrollo del Cinerama móvil, ante la falta de salas cinematográficas. Recurrieron, en 1966, a Emilio Pérez Piñero para la realización de un pabellón móvil que imitara Cinerama Dome, obra de Welton Becket, que siguió la patente de la cúpula geodésica de Richard Buckminster Fuller. Sin embargo, Piñero diseñó una patente propia conocida como cúpula reticular de directriz esférica.

RESUMEN El artículo analiza el concepto de mal radical de Kant y sostiene que su explicación del mal utiliza un modelo reconstructivo que niega la atribución de los modelos de adicción o del mal hábito. Se critica la tesis de la "revolución en la disposición moral fundamental", primero, porque Kant abandona el método fenomenológico-trascendental y, segundo, por el carácter semipelagiano de su argumentación. ABSTRACT The article analyzes Kant's concept of radical evil and argues that his explanation of evil uses a reconstructive model that denies the attribution of the models of addiction or bad habits. It criticizes the thesis of "revolution in fundamental moral disposition" for two reasons; first, Kant abandons the phenomenological-transcendental method, and, second, due to his arguments' semi-Pelagian nature.

El presente ensayo hace un recorrido por la historia de la Universidad Pontificia de Salamanca, en la que se detiene en sus orígenes y creación, el desarrollo y evolución de la misma, –al amparo del apoyo pontificio que la habilita como Universitas–, para recorrer después las luchas vividas a partir del siglo XV, en la búsqueda de poder e influencia por parte del rey y del pontífice, que ven en ella un apoyo a sus intereses particulares. Un momento singular es el vivido en el siglo XIX cuando, en el contexto de los gobiernos liberales, se suprimen las facultades eclesiásticas en el seno de la institución, momento en que pasa a denominarse Universidad Literaria de Salamanca, restaurándose posteriormente, de manera autónoma y en pasos sucesivos, como Universidad Pontificia de Salamanca, en la que se instaura en 1940.