Cuadernos salmantinos de filosofía

Religious knowledge

Gabriel Amengual — 2025-03-24

: Religious knowledge has its own characteristics. To begin with, we must remind what is understood under the term religion (1) in order to comprehend that it entails a type of knowledge that can be qualified as experiential (2). This brings to the fore the concept of experience (3). Religious knowledge is not verificable according to the canons normally applied in other fields of knowledge (4). However, this does not entail a like of rationality as conviction and testimonial trust (5). Such a rationality is congruent with the existential character of faith (6). There are three main features in religious knowledge: its content is experiential, its epistemological status is conviction and its form of exposition and transmission is testimony

The integration of knowledge in Leibniz's ‘monadology’

Juan Arana — 2025-03-24

In the first paragraphs of the Monadology, Leibniz investigates what constitutes the internal principle of both the unity and diversity of monads, as well as the unity in diversity that is expressed in change, the distinctive feature of the created monad. A confrontation of Leibniz's doctrine with that of Cartes, as expressed in The World and in The Principles of Philosophy, is required. In contrast to the Frenchman's claim to carry out a rigorous and exclusively extensional physics, what the German is going to propose is nothing less than an intensional physics. The only form of unity that the former contemplates is that of aggregation by spatio-temporal contiguity, completed by the reciprocal rest of the parts. To this, the latter opposes perceptual unity, in which unity and diversity coexist without opposition in the act of objectification. This allows the law of continuity to be reestablished in what concerns the realm of life, and between it and that of (at first sight) inorganic nature. He also introduces an internal principle of dynamism that transfers the change from the tangential-accidental to the profound-essential. Physics merges—without being confused—with psychology, the Cartesian notion of the animal-machine and even the machine-soul opposition are overcome. The idea of unconscious perception appears as a corollary of these daring interdisciplinary transgressions, and Leibniz's philosophy is equally worthy of the label of "panpsychism", as well as that of "panmachinism" or "pandynamicism". The trade of ideas even overflows the closure of categorical spheres, so that his physics is transmuted without violence into a metaphysics, which pursues the principles of corporeal nature on a proto-spatial and proto-temporal plane.

Epistemological aspects of the use of large linguistic models in artificial intelligence

Fernando Broncano — 2025-03-24

The two great phenomena of the digital era that present new epistemological questions are the extension of the Internet in the Web 2.0 version and the very recent emergence of generative artificial intelligence and “deep learning” that offers a generalized use of large linguistic models. The hypothesis in this paper is that the analytically oriented epistemology that has worked on the phenomenon of the Internet has done so taking as its model the
testimony as the centre of gravity of social epistemology. This model is not adequate for the new devices. The argument is that the epistemic authority (or lack of authority) of these devices is not based on some explicit or implicit contract of mutual recognition in exchanges of information or knowledge, but on the extensive socio-technical processes of design, formatting and data feeding, directed training and feedback with massive social use. This leads us to the need for an epistemology of massive hybrid agents.

Phenomena and experience

José Manuel Chillón — 2025-03-24

: The central role that phenomenology gives to the description of phenomena and the precise attention to the complexity of experience positioned it as an alternative to positivism and its narrow criterion of validity, precisely based on the facts and their empirical relevance. The postkantian theory of knowledge seemed to have given in to scientistic pretensions by seeking to concentrate all of philosophy in its logic. Phenomenology, in this way, stands up against positivism by discussing its foundations: the notion of fact and the understanding of experience.

Other bodies, other minds

Reynner Franco — 2025-03-24

The expressive character of human knowledge offers a relevant point of view to overcome the analogical approach of the problem of other minds embedded in simulations or attempts to articulate inferences about other people's minds from their bodies. If knowledge is exposed in the language and actions of embodied living individuals, such exposure reveals the inadequacy of the distinction between internal and external as a criterion of analysis oriented only to the distinction between the mental and the non-mental. Taking into account the starting point offered by Hegel's conception and, in part, Brandom’s inferentialist reception, this paper proposes a way to solve this insufficiency based on an intersubjective requirement of rationality, which places the practice of “knowing and making oneself known” and bodily significance as the basis for expressive knowledg.

Pure reason and transcendental synthesis in Kant

Antonio M. López Molina — 2025-03-24

This paper aims to provide a rational reconstruction of pure a priori synthesis, as articulated by Kant, with regard to the communicability of human knowledge. To this end, I will primarily use the passage from the "Transcendental Deduction of the Categories" according to the 1781 version, while also considering the specific changes made in the 1787 edition. In both of them, the central issue is to explore the merits of the transcendental method to justify the presence of pure a priori concepts in our capacity for knowledge, which are responsible for the communicability of our thoughts and knowledge. I will assert from the outset that the fundamental difference between the two passages lies in the fact that in the first edition, the role of transcendental imagination is paramount, whereas in the second edition, it is eclipsed by the emphasis on understanding, which is redefined as I think and
transcendental apperception.

To will the terrible

Mariano Rodríguez González — 2025-03-24

One of the most direct ways to access the core of Nietzsche's theory of knowledge is by confronting the theme of truth, although it is undoubtedly so complex and profound that it initially intimidates the researcher. This paper aims to revisit a rather schematic proposal from the 1960s to articulate Nietzsche's philosophy of truth and, building upon that, to defend the thesis that neither the campaign against metaphysical-moral “lies” nor the development of what we might call "pragmatic truth" fully exhausts the issue. These layers of the problem of truth only find coherent resolution, and thus become clarified, when viewed from a third level, which would be the most important: that of tragic or Dionysian truth, where the most distinctive and interesting aspects of the German philosopher's epistemological innovation are concentrated.

Ideas and beliefs in Ortega's concept of historical knowledge

Jaime de Salas Ortueta — 2025-03-24

The article describes Ortega and Gasset’s evolution towards a mature conception of history with the distinction of Ideas and Beliefs. Basically, it works on the contrast between an early work of Ortega, Meditaciones del Quijote and En torno a Galileo which reflects Ortega’s definitive position. Though Ortega was always interested in history, it is only in his mature work that he felt that he had found the way to understand conceptual change as such. The explanation of Ortega’s evolution in this field is related not only to his interest in the politics -national and international- of his day, but is also connected to his understanding of life as a metaphysical principle.

On the critical intention of the social theory of knowledge

Diego Sánchez Meca — 2025-03-24

Within the framework of its conception of the history of reason as a process of rationalization of reality, the Frankfurt School theory of knowledge, and Adorno in particular, point out the complicity of the traditional theory of knowledge in the process of reducing the individual to a mere number and moment of the production process. Apart from any "humanist" attempt to recover the value of the individual, there is an insistence on the need to recognize the vital dynamics of society as the content of all logic, whose laws must be understood as the expression and arbitration of social experiences. The traditional logic of identity has contributed to the conservative, violent and unjust exaltation of the immutable, so another instance of validity is necessary in which the question of an absolute truth is replaced by the consideration of work and social action as conditions of knowledge.

A good critical toolbox

Julián Chaves González — 2025-03-24

Reseña de: García López, Daniel J. Ínsulas extrañas. Una ontología jurídica de la vida a través de la Italian Theory (Agamben, Esposito, Rodotà, Resta), Valencia: Tirant Lo Blanch, 2023, 467 pp.

Sacristán's lessons for the 21st century

Enrique Felip Expósito — 2025-03-24

SACRISTÁN LUZÓN, Manuel, Filosofía y Metodología de las ciencias sociales (II). Salvador López Arnal y José Sarrión Andaluz. (Eds), Barcelona: Editorial
Montesinos, 2024, 618 págs

Wisdom and humility

Josefa Carolina Fortuno Hernández — 2025-03-24

Reseña de: José SARRIÓN ANDALUZ e Iñaki VÁZQUEZ ÁLVAREZ (eds.), Salvador López Arnal, La humildad de un sabio. Escritos en homenaje a su trayectoria intelectual y militante. Madrid: Editorial Dykinson, 2024, 311 pp. DOI: 10.14679/3294.

Hours of philosophy

Martín González Fernández — 2025-03-24

Reseña de: Carlos POSE, Teoría y práctica de la consultoría en ética clínica. Modelo deliberativo de resolución de conflictos. Granada: Editorial Comares, 2022, 194 pp

A philosophical review of artistic tradition

Carlos Isler Soto — 2025-03-24

Reseña de: Cofré, Juan Omar, Filosofía de la Obra de Arte y la Literatura. (Enfoque Fenomenológico), tomo I, Corporación Cultural Diadokhé, Santiago de Chile, 2023, 323 pp.

Aesthetic experience

Diego Pérez Lasserre — 2025-03-24

Reseña de: Juan Omar Cofré, Filosofía de la obra de arte y la literatura. Tomo II. Santiago de Chile: Corporación Cultural Diadokhé, 2023, 238 págs.

Raimon Panikkar, the advaita as a philosophical proposal

Fernando Susaeta Montoya — 2025-03-24

Reseña de: J. A. TESTÓN TURIEL, La filosofía relacional e intercultural de Raimon Panikkar. Ediciones Universidad Pontificia de Salamanca, Salamanca 2024, 259 pp.

Informe estadístico