Author Archives: Jesús Zamora Bonilla
On scientific co-authorship (& 3): Intelectual property rights and the individualization of items of knowledge
In our previous entries, we asked why it is that collaborating scientists prefer to publish one single paper in which all their contributions are ‘mixed’, instead of one individual paper by each co-author (with quotations to the other collaborator’s […]
On scientific co-authorship (2): An economic diversion, Ronald Coase’s theory of the firm
Let me leave aside for a moment our talk about scientists and papers, and bring up a topic that, at first sight, might seem totally unconnected: Ronald Coase’s economic theory about the firm and the allocation of property rights. […]
On scientific co-authorship (1): Why do scientists publish together?
The allocation of merit to individual scientists is one of the crucial aspects of how scientific systems work. Publication of ‘papers’ in important journals, and, still most significantly, citation of those papers in the works of colleagues, is perhaps […]
The Enlightenment wars (& 3): but...what kind of humanism do we need?
In the two previous entries (1, 2) of this series I described the different diagnoses that Marina Garcés and Steven Pinker make of humanity’s current predicament, without concealing my sympathies for the latter’s: with up […]
The Enlightenment wars (2): the details
Are we in the best of the times, as Steven Pinker asserts? Or do we live in a ‘posthumous’ society, to say it with the favourite image of Marina Garcés? As I told in the previous entry, it is […]
The Enlightenment wars (1): progress or decline?
Keep in mind the word Enlightenment, because it’s very likely that it will be one of the most fashionable concepts within the next months. At a global level, Steven Pinker’s new book, Enlightenment now, will probably carry the […]
Humanities: how not to defend them, and how to do it (2)
In the past entry I presented a criticism to a few common arguments (or rather, topics) that we often find ‘in defence’ of the humanities. Those arguments were problematic not only because their fallacious nature, but because they only […]
Humanities: how not to defend them, and how to do it (1)
Amicus Plato, sed magis amica veritas (Plato is my friend, but Truth is still a better friend of mine), they say Aristotle whispered when he explained the arguments with which he demolished the theories of his teacher, whose school, […]
Panpsychism: Is mind everywhere?
The problem of what is the relation between matter and mind, and more particularly, between the physical stuff of our brain, on the one hand, and our consciousness and their conscious, qualitative states (also known as ‘qualia’), certainly is […]
Your mind will never be uploaded to a computer
One of the most popular ideas within the new and fashionable transhumanism craze is that, in the future humans, will be able of reaching a kind of ‘immortality’ by decoding the information contained in your brain, ‘uploading’ it to […]