Sistema Regional de Información
en línea para Revistas Científicas de América Latina,
el Caribe, España y Portugal

A critical reading of Eduardo Fermandois’ recent book Ocho ensayos sobre la metáfora (Eight Essays on Metaphor) is made, in which the main theses defended by the author are pointed out and some critical remarks are formulated. It is claimed that Fermandois’ book is one of the most complete and original studies on the subject of metaphor in recent years. 

The book Linajes: Esas cosas que evolucionan by Gustavo Caponi has the overarching goal of defending the thesis of taxonomic individualism, according to which biological taxa should be thought of as individuals and not as natural classes. That is, terms such as Panthera leo are proper names that designate particular entities (lineages) that have parts, rather than terms that designate natural classes that have instances. To this end, he embarks on a series of tasks of different kinds, ranging from the search for definitions of terms such as “species”, “lineage”, and “reproduction” to clarify the content of the thesis, to the defense of this thesis against common objections. In the present critical note, I give a brief introduction to the individuality thesis and then focus on and criticize four aspects of the book’s content. These are (1) the constant search for definitions as antithetical to the metatheoretical spirit that Caponi claims to adopt; (2) his defense of the image of the tree of life against phenomena such as hybridization and symbiogenesis, which would require the use of networks; (3) his original idea according to which lineages have a temporal but not a spatial location; and (4) his assimilation of adaptations (as explananda of the theory of natural selection) with the characters used in contemporary systematics.

Miguel Fuentes’ book Scientific Dynamics and Complexity Measures introduces a novel approach to analyzing scientific progress through complexity metrics. In this framework, the progress of science is conceptualized as a reduction in the number of bits needed to describe phenomena, suggesting that science advances by reducing the complexity of its explanations. This critical analysis examines the scope and limitations of the model proposed by Fuentes, situating it in relation to Kuhn’s paradigm cycle and exploring issues such as its propositionalist nature, the treatment of incommensurability, the role of weak emergence, and the objectivity of theoretical progress.

In De qué hablamos cuando hablamos de emoción, Andrea Melamed analyzes the main philosophical theories of emotion and argues that none of them alone explains the complexity of our emotional life. Instead, Melamed defends a pluralist metatheoretical proposal that advocates bringing together different theories of emotion to explain specific facets of what we call «emotion». In this critical note, I examine Melamed’s argument on two fronts. First, I compare Melamed’s taxonomy of philosophical theories of emotion with the taxonomy recently proposed by Michael Brady. In doing so, I propose a joint taxonomy that inherits the virtues of both divisions of the literature. Second, I compare Melamed’s metatheoretical proposal with Griffiths’s eliminativism and show the difficulties pluralist approaches face to avoid collapsing into eliminativism.

This paper examines how it was possible that through Röschlaub, Brown’s work was introduced in Germany among German physicians and philosophers. For this purpose, Kant’s scientific conception is used. Then the crisis of German medicine at the end of that century is introduced. Finally, it is explained how Röschlaub introduces Brownian medicine by putting it in dialogue with Kant taking advantage of the crisis in medicine of his time.

Can species membership warrant the advantageous treatment of an individual, human or nonhuman? For decades, philosophers have debated the moral justification of speciesism. This debate, however, risks becoming a hard to solve clash of ultimate intuitions—a possibility that has led some authors to develop an alternative epistemic approach to speciesism, which inspects, not speciesism’s moral correction, but the epistemic reliability of speciesist judgments. That is, whether, those judgments arise in epistemically favorable circumstances—or whether they are the product of reliable judgment-formation mechanisms. In this article, I pursue three goals. First, to survey and articulate, in a coherent manner, a so far undertheorized epistemic turn in the literature. Second, to explain why it is desirable to adopt an epistemic approach which supplements the traditional moral approach. And, third, to critically assess three recent contributions—suggesting some possible avenues for future work, as of yet neglected.