scholarly journals Los argumentos resbaladizos. El uso practico de razonamientos imperfectos

Author(s):  
Mª Teresa López de la Vieja

RESUMENEl artículo analiza el papel desempeñado por los argumentos de pendiente resbaladiza en los debates prácticos. Por un lado, estos argumentos suelen ejemplificar una forma d razonamiento imperfecto o paradójico. De hecho, la Filosofía clásica griega ya identificó las principales dificultades del sorites, el argumento del «montón». Por otro lado, la pendiente resbaladiza llama de nuevo la atención de la Filosofía contemporánea, ya que ocupa un lugar destacado en determinadas cuestiones morales, como pueden ser la eutanasia, los límites de la investigación biomédica, o las posibles consecuencias de la intervención humana sobre el medio ambiente natural y sobe otras especies, no humanas. De esta forma, la Ética aplicada examina los riesgos y efecto son deseables de decisiones que, el comienzo, eran o parecían perfectamente aceptables, y lo hace así a pesar de que la metáfora de la pendiente resbaladiza no pueda aportar suficientes evidencias para frenar aquellas decisiones que comportan riesgos. Aun así, la pendiente sirve para expresar el peligro, la tragedia, los efectos negativos que amenazarían nuestra existencia, o la de las generaciones futuras. Por lo tanto, imágenes como la «caja de Pandora», la «ruptura de los diques», el «alud», no solo transmiten que algunas acciones pueden poner en riesgo la vida sino que, además, ilustran el uso práctico de los argumentos imperfectos.PALABRAS CLAVEpendiente resbaladiza, argumentación práctica, Ética aplicada.ABSTRACTThe article would analyze the role of the slippery-slope arguments in practical debates. On the one hand, they usually exemplify the imperfect, paradoxical reasoning; in fact, the ancient Greek Philosophy already identified the central flaws of the sorites, the «heap» argument. On the other hand, the metaphor of the slippery-slope draws again the attention of contemporary Philosophy, since it has a central part in some ethical issues, as happens with questions like euthanasia, the limits of biomedical research, and the possible consequences of the human action on the natural environment, and on non-humans. So, applied Ethics considers risks and undesirable effects of decisions that, at the very beginning, are, or seem acceptable, in spite of the fact that the slippery-slope could not allege enough evidences to prevent from this risky decision. However, it expresses how danger, tragedy, negative outcome would intrude in our existence, or in the existence of the next generations. Therefore, images like the «Pandora’s box», the «broken docks», the «avalanche», etc, not only suggest that some actions could definitively endanger life, but they illustrate the practical use of imperfect arguments.KEY WORDSslippery- slope, practical argumentation, applied Ethics

Phronimon ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-61
Author(s):  
Bernard Matolino

Taking it to be the case that there are reasonable grounds to compare African communitarianism and Aristotle’s eudaimonia, or any aspect of African philosophy with some ancient Greek philosophy,1;2 I suggest that it is worthwhile to revisit an interesting aspect of interpreting Aristotelian virtue and how that sort of interpretation may rehabilitate the role of emotion in African communitarianism. There has been debate on whether Aristotle’s ethic is exclusively committed to an intellectualist version or a combination of intellectualism and emotion. There are good arguments for holding either view. The same has not quite been attempted with African communitarianism. This paper seeks to work out whether African communitarianism can be viewed on an exclusively emotional basis or a combination of emotion and intellect.


Author(s):  
Richard Tur

Legal ethics can be considered from at least three related viewpoints. First, as ‘professional ethics’, it is a corpus of rules, principles and standards, often embodied in a written code and disseminated, applied and enforced by appropriate governing bodies as a guide to the professional conduct of lawyers. Legal professions set up specific institutions and officers to monitor and assist practitioners and to accumulate experience and expertise in applying detailed provisions in morally complex situations. For some commentators this is primarily regulation or administration and not ethics at all, but for others it is ethics in action or ‘applied ethics’. ‘Applied ethics’ is the second aspect of legal ethics, distinguished from ethics in general by the focus on ethical issues in the context of legal practice, including confidentiality, conflict of interest or acting for a morally disreputable client. Interesting though such questions may be in themselves, some writers do not acknowledge that they are truly questions of ethics, because the duties and privileges of specialist functional groups generally and lawyers in particular are not universalizable. For others, including some feminist ethicists, the ‘agent as such’ does not exist and we all encounter moral difficulties and problems, if we encounter them at all, only in the context of some specific relationship or role, for example in the role of a lawyer. Legal ethics thus requires an analysis of role morality. The third aspect of legal ethics is as an integral element in general philosophical and legal education.


Author(s):  
Lyudmyla Rakityanska

The article deals with the historically conditioned philosophical aspect of the formation and the development of the concept of «emotional intelligence» from the pre-Christian times to the Antiquity. This concept, as a complex of mental properties of an individual, was first formulated and introduced into the psychological theory by the US scholars P. Salovey and J. Mayer in 1990. However, the origins of ideas on the problem of the unity of the emotional and the rational can be found in religious and philosophical teachings. The Bible contains examples that testify to the role of intelligence in emotional self-regulation of a human being and confirm the existential, «emotional wisdom of mankind». Our research has proven that the idea of the relationship between emotions and the reason as the essential manifestations of an individual is recurrent at all stages of the history of mankind, its roots date back to the time of the primitive society. In various periods of history, that problem was interpreted differently depending on cultural-historical, religious and philosophical traditions, world outlook views regarding the role of human emotions and human reason in the cognizance of the surrounding world, the nature of their interconnection, and attributing parity or priority features to them. The mythical and pagan views of primitive people, their animistic beliefs testified to the undivided nature of their thinking, and were embodied in various visual-sensory forms of collective creativity that combined intellectual, emotional and volitional attitude to the world. As the human civilization developed and the social relationships changed, also changed mythological and philosophical views of primitive people that were opposed by the naive-spontaneous philosophical world outlook of ancient thinkers. The image and the symbol of the primitive society were supplanted by the Logos, i. e. the reason, by means of which the naive-spontaneous philosophy tried to solve world outlook problems. Still, the representatives of the Pythagorean philosophical school can claim the credit for using, for the first time, emotions as the basis for the comprehension of aesthetic phenomena. During that period, for the first time within the ancient Greek philosophy, aesthetic knowledge was formed, to which the notion of «sensuality» was central. The classical period of the ancient Greek philosophy testifies to the priority of the «rationalized world outlook» of the ancient philosophers, who approached the solution of the world outlook issues from the standpoint of reason.


2016 ◽  
Vol 86 (2) ◽  
pp. 69-84
Author(s):  
Kazimierz Pawłowski

For followers of religions which take solid cultural form of coherent doctrinalsystems, the fact that other comparable religious systems exist may posea difficult theoretical and existential problem that needs to be addressed ata number of levels, including the one of human existential experience. This isthe problem that was faced by the original followers of the Christian religionin relation to the Greek spiritual culture, and ancient Greek philosophy inparticular, at the time when it boldly explored spiritual areas closely connectedto Christianity. The problem became particularly significant in the secondcentury CE. It was tackled by early Christian thinkers that were educated inGreek philosophy themselves and used its ideas to solve the above-mentionedproblem.


2021 ◽  
pp. 119-134
Author(s):  
Christoph Hermann

This chapter rediscovers use value as an essential category for understanding commodification and capitalism more generally. The distinction between use value and exchange value goes back to ancient Greek philosophy and it played an important role in classical political economy. However, with the invention of marginal utility in the late nineteenth century, use value moved from the center to the fringes of economic thinking. Even where it survived, such as in Marxist scholarship, there was considerable disagreement about the role of use value in a critical political economy. The chapter, furthermore, explores the value of nature and by doing so unveils the shortcomings of the concept of marginal utility. One problem is that marginal utility denies the existence of collective value. Following Polanyi, the chapter argues that products not only have individual value, but also have a social and ecological utility. And social and ecological utility can differ considerably from individual valuation.


2000 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-39 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tony Burns

AbstractWhat is the young Marx's attitude towards questions of psychology? More precisely, what is his attitude towards the human mind and its relationship to the body? To deal adequately with this issue requires a consideration of the relationship between Marx and Feuerbach. It also requires some discussion of the thought of Aristotle. For the views of Feuerbach and the young Marx are (in some respects) not at all original. Rather, they represent a continuation of a long tradition which derives ultimately from ancient Greek philosophy, and especially from the philosophy of Aristotle. As is well known, Aristotle's thought with respect to questions of psychology are mostly presented, by way of a critique of the doctrines of the other philosophers of his day, in his De Anima. W.H. Walsh has made the perceptive observation that Aristotle's views might be seen as an attempt to develop a third approach which avoids the pitfalls usually associated with the idealism of Plato, on the one hand, and the materialism of Democritus on the other. It might be argued that there is an analogy between the situation in which Aristotle found himself in relation to the idealists and materialists of his own day and that which confronted Marx in the very early 1840s. For, like Aristotle, Marx also might be seen as attempting to develop such a third approach. The difference is simply that, in the case of Marx, the idealism in question is that of Hegel rather than that of Plato, and the materialism is the ‘mechanical materialism’ of the eighteenth century rather than that of Democritus. This obvious parallel might well explain why Marx took such a great interest in Aristotle's De Anima both during and shortly after doing the preparatory work for his doctoral dissertation – the subject matter of which, of course, is precisely the materialist philosophy of the ancient Greek atomists Democritus and Epicurus.


2016 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 265-290
Author(s):  
John R. Wallach

Notably since Thomas Hobbes, canonically with Benjamin Constant, and conventionally amid Nietzschean, Popperian, Straussian, Arendtian, liberal (sc. Madison, Mill, Berlin, Rawls, Vlastos, Hansen), republican (sc. Skinner), political (sc. Finley), and sociological (sc. Ober) readings of ancient texts, contemporary scholarship on the ancients often has employed some version of the dichotomous ancient/modern or ancient/contemporary contrast as a template for explaining, understanding, and interpretively appropriating ancient texts and political practices – particularly those of ancient Greek philosophy and democracy (although Roman ideas and practices also have been invoked). In particular, this has been done to argue for some conception of political ethics and democracy. I argue that this rhetorical trope, often using Athens and Europe/America as synecdoches for antiquity and modernity, has generated narrow and distorted views of ancient texts and political practices, on the one hand, and their contemporary relevance, on the other – views that misinterpret the theoretical significance of historical phenomena and misread the potential lessons of ancient authorities. Instead, texts and practices should be read either with more qualifications or more fully against a historical dynamic of critical philosophy and political power – including its ethical, cultural, institutional, and governing elements – that is not framed by this dichotomy.


2018 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 234-244
Author(s):  
Thomas Sören Hoffmann

The article compares different models of bioethics. The dominant model considers bioethics as just a new area of applied ethics focusing in its origin mainly on questions of medical ethics like those rising from reproductive medicine. Within the framework of this concept, the formal application of ethical principles on medical practices is normally understood as a strategy for the preservation of personal autonomy of the individual. Another model linked e.g. to the names of Van Rensselaer Potter or Hans Jonas can be called a "holistic" one and refers to ethical issues discussed within the greater context of "general meditation" of life in general, nature and human life-worlds. Holistic bioethics focuses on the idea of integrity, and it also allows an internal "living" pluralism of perspectives, which corresponds to the self-differentiation of life in a plurality of life-worlds. The third model is an integrative bioethics which not only tries to combine the perspectives of autonomy on the one hand, life and nature as a whole on the other, but also shows that bioethics is founded on its own sources of normativity (e.g. in the idea of life). From these sources also rises its task of “integrating” the perspectives of different scientific disciplines on issues of life in general. The concept of "integrative bioethics" is promoted in the article because of the following characteristics: integrative bioethics considers all kinds of interaction between autonomous persons, living beings and nature in general; it is transdisciplinary and therefore based on a dialogue of all sciences in which bioethical awareness of the problem may arise; it is open also to non-scientific manifestations of individual and social consciousness and therefore in discussing live in a normative sense nevertheless stays in contact with the real life-worlds of real people. At the end of the article integrative bioethics is discussed with regard to the example of the meaning of the idea of a “natural will”.


Author(s):  
László Daragó

We can find the sprouts of the architectural approach of space in ancient Greek Philosophy. The process lasts from the Pythagorean notion (kenon) – which is the emptiness between the numbers – to the definition of space by St Augustine, where he determines the forming of space as the main role of architecture. The enquiry regarding architectural approach of space intensified after the Second World War – Hajnóczi joined into this discourse with his works on the field of spatial theory in the 1960’s. He intended to create a unified framework for the different approaches of space from different fields of science. This common range of interpretation is deriving from the analytic understanding of space – that is Spatiology. Overviewing Hajnóczi’s theoretical works we will try to show the evolution of his thoughts and will try to identify the antecedents of his theoretical structures in the works of contemporary thinkers. In his academic doctorate dissertation in 1977 with the analytic approach he subdivided the architectural space into its elemental spatial relations generated by the constructional objects and then he has attempted to give the quantitative and also the qualitative understanding of them. In his Genesis – as the last accord of his oeuvre – he tried to understand the particular elements of this system and also build an intelligent whole of them again.A tér építészeti értelmezésének megalapozását az európai kultúrában már a görög bölcseletben megleljük. A püthegóreusok számok közötti ürességétől (kenon) az építészeti tér Szt. Ágoston általi meghatározásáig tart a folyamat, melyben végül az építészet legfőbb feladataként a tér alakítását határozták meg. Ezen értelmezések körüli érdeklődés felizzott a második világháborút követő időben – ebbe a diskurzusba kapcsolódott be Hajnóczi Gyula térelméleti munkássága az 1960-as években. Azzal a szándékkal lépett fel, hogy egységes keretet adjon a sok tudományág felől érkező építészeti tér-értelmezéseknek. Ez a közös értelmezési tartomány a tér analitikus értelmezéséből sarjad – ezt a tértudományt nevezte el spaciológiának. Végigtekintve Hajnóczi Gyula térelméleti műveit igyekszünk bemutatni a gondolatok kifejlődésének folyamatát, valamint kísérletet teszünk arra, hogy felmutassuk a kortárs kutatók munkásságában Hajnóczi Gyula gondolati rendszerének előzményeit. Az 1977-ben megjelent akadémiai doktori értekezésében az építészeti tér analitikus értelmezésével szétbontotta az építészeti teret az azt meghatározó konstruktív közegek elemi térviszonylataira, és ezek mennyiségi és minőségi értelmezését kísérelte meg. Az életmű végső akkordjaként írt, Az építészeti tér genezise c. műve az analitikusan szétbontott és egyenként értelmezett térelemek rendszerének megértésére, az elemek újbóli összeépítésére tett kísérletet.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document