Jesús Mosterín
Mosterín acquired his initial logical formation at the Institut für mathematische Logik und Grundlagenforschung in Münster (Germany).
[3] He has shown how the uniform digitalization of each type of symbolic object (such as chromosomes, texts, pictures, movies or pieces of music) can be considered to implement a certain positional numbering system.
[6] He has also delved in the historical and biographical aspects of the development of modern logic, as shown in his original work on the lives of Gottlob Frege, Georg Cantor, Bertrand Russell, John von Neumann, Kurt Gödel and Alan Turing, intertwined with a formal analysis of their main technical contributions.
[7] Karl Popper tried to establish a criterion of demarcation between science and metaphysics, but the speculative turn taken by certain developments in theoretical physics has contributed to muddle the issue again.
He makes a distinction between the standard core of a scientific discipline, that at a certain point in time should only include relatively reliable and empirically supported ideas, and the cloud of speculative hypotheses surrounding it.
[8] Following the path open by Patrick Suppes, Mosterín has paid much attention to the structure of metric concepts, because of their indispensable mediating role at the interface between theory and observation where reliability is tested.
[10] Besides actively participating in the current discussions on evolutionary theory and genetics, Mosterín has also tackled issues like the definition of life itself or the ontology of biological organisms and species.
[14] Earman and Mosterín conclude that, despite the widespread influence of the inflationary paradigm and the fact that it does not contradict any known results, there are as yet no good grounds for admitting any of the models of inflation into the standard core of scientific cosmology.
Mosterín's interest in wildlife led to an early collaboration with Félix Rodríguez de la Fuente, the famous Spanish naturalist and documentary director, for promoting public awareness and appreciation of wild nature; this included the successful Fauna Encyclopedia.
He proposes the elimination of unnecessary and painful experiments, the abolition of factory farming based on confinement that prevents animals from displaying their genetically programmed behavior, and stopping the specially destructive and cruel forms of commercial fisheries like bottom trawling.
Following Hume and Darwin, and taking into account Giacomo Rizzolatti’s results on mirror neurons, Mosterín suggests that our inborn capacity for compassion, fed by knowledge and empathy, is a more solid basis for the moral consideration of non-human animals than abstract and uncheckable speculations about intrinsic rights.
Mosterín thinks that the nation-state is incompatible with the full development of freedom, whose blossoming requires the reorganization of the world political system along cosmopolitan lines.
[25] The 21st century has witnessed a vigorous revival of the idea of human nature in the hands of authors like Edward Wilson, Steven Pinker and Jesús Mosterín.
The newest layers are devoted to the most recent acquisitions, like bipedalism, grip of precision, large brain cortex, language and other abstract or recursive cognitive processes.
[26] Mosterín has dealt with the methods and criteria for distinguishing natural from cultural aspects of human capacities and behaviors and has provided a solid basis to theoretical anthropology.
He has also engaged in the discussion and clarification of bioethical issues, like research with embryonic stem cells, birth control, abortion and euthanasia, taking always a scientific point of view and a position in favor of human freedom.
In 2009 he has completed a thoroughgoing analysis of the forces driving cultural change, paying special attention to the role of Internet and other factors of information technology.
His series of books on Historia del Pensamiento aims at covering all main intellectual traditions from an interdisciplinary approach dealing simultaneously with developments in philosophy, science and ideology.
The volume on India, besides dealing with linguistics and mathematics, contains a compact presentation of the main philosophical schools, from the Upanishad, through the Jaina and Buddhist developments, to the Advaita Vedanta of Shankara, which obviously attracts the author.
The Jewish myths are not spared, but a deeply sympathetic position is taken to such important thinkers as Maimonides (ben Maimon), Spinoza and Albert Einstein.
The intellectual contributions of the main Christian thinkers (like Augustine, Thomas Aquinas and Luther) are analyzed and evaluated, but also the great historical processes are covered, like the Crusades, the universities, the Reformation and Counter-Reformation.
The book devoted to Islam[35] offers a critical description of the formation of the Quran and of the history of Muslim law, theology, Sufism, philosophy, mathematics and empirical science.
Special attention is paid to the main thinkers of the period of splendor of Islamic civilization (8th to 12th centuries), like Avicenna, Averroes, Omar Khayyam and Al-Khwarizmi.
