Author Archives: Jesús Zamora Bonilla
The marketization of science and the ‘marketization’ of science studies (1)
As readers of this blog will surely know, the economics of scientific knowledge is a topic on which I have worked extensively, and also written here not a few entries. Now I want to tackle a common objection to […]
Fifty years of the Paretian liberal paradox.
2020 marks exactly half a century from the publication of one of the most important papers in the crossing of economics, philosophy, and political science (and, taking into account that it barely contained six skimpy pages, probably one of the […]
Caplan’s ‘case against education’ (& 2)
In a recent entry, I provided a summary of Brian Caplan’s views (in his book The Case against Education) about the main evils of our contemporary education system. In a nutshell, the main problem is, in the first […]
Why emergent levels will not save free will (& 2)
In the first entry of this series, I briefly explained Christian List’s attempt to vindicate the ontological and scientific reality of intentional action as a real emergent phenomenon. In a nutshell, intentional, deliberate and often ‘rational’ action is not […]
Caplan’s ‘case against education’ (1)
It’s a pitty that Bryan Caplan’s extremely interesting book The Case Against Education: Why the Education System Is a Waste of Time and Money , published in 2018, has not deserved more careful attention in the public and permanent […]
Why emergent levels will not save free will (1)
Christian List, a German professor in the London School of Economics, is one of the most prolific and intelligent authors in the new generation of philosophers of social science. He has authored and co-authored a formidable number of extremely interesting […]
The Italian coffee pot, a dialog on values in science (3): Science doesn’t do it itself, it has to be done
[Read Part 1 & Part 2]
VIOLETA: You know the shape of the classical Italian coffee-pot, like the one Faustino has just braught. It consists of two truncated cones or pyramids, joined by their narrowest parts. I claim that […]
The Italian coffee pot, a dialog on values in science (2): From value pluralism to the unity of scientific values
[Read the first part here]
LORENZO: Alright, Violeta, we may admit that the members of a scientific discipline may agree to assess the conjectures and models each of them is proposing according to some consensual rule, and we […]
The Italian coffee pot, a dialog on values in science (1): Individualism, values and preferences
LORENZO: We are very thankful to you, Faustino, for your invitation to see today’s football match in your home. This morning, in the Philosophy of Science Congress, you have been one of the few recalling that our national team plays […]
The limits of animal ethics
One of the most important ethical debates of the next decades will be, no doubt, the one about our moral obligations towards non-human beings, and in particular, towards the members of other animal species. Very likely, not only philosophical discussions, […]