Live with philosophy
Philosophy may seem a useless and anachronistic practice, but, in fact, it teaches to think critically and it helps to live better. Ethics does it on the individual level, and political philosophy, on the collective level.
José María Erustes was born and raised in the Raval, a poor neighborhood of Barcelona. Since he was 14 he worked as a welder assembler. With a wife and two children he was unemployed and divorced. Family disagreements and alcohol pushed him to go live in the street. He was homeless for about five years, until The Arrels Foundation helped him get his life back.
The word “politics” derives from the Greek “polis”, which designated the state cities in ancient Greece. Moià has about 6,000 inhabitants and is the capital of the Moianès region. From these two examples the program analyzes concepts such as happiness, virtue, justice, State or power.
The following spoke: Norbert Bilbeny, Professor of Ethics, UB; Nuria Sara Miras, Dept. of Moral and Political Philosophy of the UB; Dionís Guiteras, mayor of Moià; Antoni Arenas, Chief Local Police of Moià, and former homeless José María Erustes.
Philosophy of science
Apart from treating human morality, philosophy also analyzes science, and in fact, provides the theoretical foundations. The professor of logic, history and philosophy of science from UB José Díez explains the two procedures of hypothesis testing: the deductive and the inductive. As the philosopher Karl Popper already pointed out, science does not advance confirming, but refuting hypotheses. One area of science where we find good examples of hypothesis testing is genetics. Invisible hypotheses about genes or chromosomes give visible predictions in organisms such as the vinegar fly. The IRB Barcelona biologist Jordi Casanova explains it. In conclusion, knowledge, to be interesting, must be fallible. Because the only way to get new knowledge is by the inductive procedure, which implies the possibility of making mistakes. The aspiration of a certain and expansive knowledge is unattainable.
