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

[Editors’ note] This article, an edited transcript of the 25th Inaugural Lecture at the College of General Studies, University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras, offers a succinct genealogy of contemporary Latin America’s episteme and its pervasive logic of mestizaje which necessitates a disavowal of Blackness as its foundation. The author tracks this logic through the works of authors such as José de Vasconcelos, Ángel Rama, José Martí and others, emphasizing the urgent need to decolonize the academy and radically reconceptualize what has hitherto been worthy of the term “knowledge”.

Presentation of this special issue on Black Thought in Puerto Rico

This article presents what I call the Central Normative Proposalof Luis Villoro. This proposal is based on an interpretation of the principle of non-exclusion in ethics and epistemology. The core argument of the paper is based on a linguistic analogy that demonstrates the importance of reasonable communication for non-exclusion in epistemology, which is assumed in various theses of Villoro. A consequence of this analogy for non-exclusion in ethics is that Villoro defends basing what is reasonable on the concrete possibilities of mutual understanding, starting with asymmetries and injustices that are obfuscated or eliminated in a contractualist analysis, or one that begins with strictly egalitarian principles. This criticism is compatible with egalitarian views, but it assumes a radically different point of departure. Although various theses by Villoro are compatible with egalitarian notions, given this point of departure based on asymmetries of power his proposal should be understood based on our cognitive capacities to understand and appreciate such asymmetries. For this reason, the paper concludes with an analysis of the notion of reasonableness, which under my interpretation Villoro defines in terms of our capacities for attention, that are not reducible to beliefs or systems of beliefs. In this way, the Central Normative Proposal of Villoro depends on the convergence between truth and the dignity of the members of communities in which as matter-of-fact asymmetries exist and must be eliminated through concrete communicative efforts.

I propose a reading of Friedrich Schiller’s Wallenstein as a staging (Darstellung) of the categories of the beautiful and the sublime, as well as other derived poetic categories, such as the naive and the sentimental, idyll and elegy or pathetic and festive satire. This artistic exercise allows Schiller to experiment and develop his own aesthetic and poetic ideas. In this way, there is an authentic dialogue between art and philosophy within the work of one of the German classics of modernity. One conclusion is that Wallenstein brings to an end an idealistic understanding of the world, since, as Villacañas expresses via Hegel, it does not end as a theodicy. 

We present the central ideas and structure of Diana I. Pérez and Antoni Gomila’s book Social Cognition and the Second Person in Human Interaction (Routledge, 2021).

We address the critical comments on the central ideas of the book Social Cognition and the Second Person in Human Interaction. First, we clarify some aspects of the proposal: the relationship between second-person interactions and bodily expressions of attributed psychological states, and the role that they have in the acquisition of the most basic psychological concepts. Next, we specify the sense in which second-person attributions are practical and transparent. Finally, we highlight the ubiquitous role of normativity in second-person interactions, emphasizing the asymmetries that occur in these interactions, and we show why we hold that there are no interactions devoid of normativity to which normativity is later added.

In these comments, I highlight some virtues of Diana Pérez and Antoni Gomila’s proposal in Social Cognition and the Second Person in Human Interaction and formulate two questions. The first one is about the role of basic emotions in one-on-one interactions at the group and intergroup levels. The second one concerns the influence of positions of power on human relationships and how they alter or modify mindreading.

The spread of various kinds of paranoid theories seems to have a growing influence on public opinion in contemporary democracies. An attempt is made here to review some classical sources that could explain the origins and scope of these ways of thinking about politics. From the review of various contributions, such as those of historians or theorists like Freud, Popper and Canetti, an attempt will be made to unravel some characteristics of conspiracy thinking about society. In order to update the theme, reflections by thinkers such as Eco and Bobbio are also considered. The legitimacy crisis of our political systems, it is argued, provides a background for the proliferation of paranoid explanations, also fueled by depoliticization and the predominance of subjective demands in the public arena.

El Covid-19 ha cambiado la vida de millones de personas en el mundo. La pandemia afectó todos los ámbitos de la humanidad: económico, político, social, salud y educativo. El presente artículo aborda únicamente el último ámbito, en una Universidad del Sureste de México. El objetivo fue analizar la incidencia de la pandemia por Covid-19 en el proceso de enseñanza-aprendizaje durante el ciclo de clases virtuales 2020. La investigación se basó en el paradigma cuantitativo, y es de tipo descriptiva-exploratoria. Se emplearon dos cuestionarios enviados a través de Google forms a profesores y a alumnos. Dentro de los hallazgos más significativos se encontró que tanto los docentes universitarios como los estudiantes modificaron de forma radical, su forma de enseñar y aprender, respectivamente. Los docentes se vieron forzados a impartir clases a través de plataformas educativas que la mayoría jamás había usado. Un cuarto de los docentes contrataron paquetes de internet con mayor velocidad; asimismo, se vieron en la necesidad de adquirir equipo de cómputo nuevo. Esta nueva modalidad hizo que los académicos modificarán sus planeaciones y programas de enseñanzas a la modalidad virtual; también realizaron ajustes a las forma de evaluar, tomando en consideración diversos criterios, que no eran valorados antes de la pandemia. Por otra parte, los alumnos consideran que su desempeño académico bajó durante pandemia debido a diferentes situaciones como el exceso de tareas que los docentes asignaban; las técnicas de enseñanzas poco dinámicas; la falta de motivación de los profesores; y el poco uso de materiales didácticos.

Academic achievement makes it possible to recognize the scope of learning obtained by students. Its study provides the opportunity to examine the state of the factors that influence it, particularly school motivation, self-control, and social skills, thus making it possible to propose strategies to improve it and, in turn, to enhance success in professional training. Likewise, it is considered that social learning can support the aforementioned strategies because the context has an effect on people's behavior. In this sense, it was suggested that the relevant space to carry out the strategies is the university tutoring, because it has a comprehensive approach that involves interventions in various areas such as social, cognitive, emotional, and personal. Thus, the objective of this work was to identify academic performance, the factors that influence it and its similarity in social groups with friendship ties, as well as to recognize the significant figures that have influenced the behaviors of students of the bachelor’s degree in Education at the Universidad Autónoma del Carmen. It was a quantitative study with descriptive scope; the survey technique was used and an instrument that showed reliability was established from the bibliographic review, besides working with a representative sample and a no probabilistic sampling with voluntary subjects. The results show that most of the factors that influence academic performance are positive in the study group, and it was also found that the members of the social groups have similarities in terms of their performance.