Lorenzo Peña facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Lorenzo Peña
Peña broadcasting in August 2022
Born	August 29, 1944 Alicante, Spain
Other names	Lorenzo Peña y Gonzalo, Llorenç Penya
Academic background
Alma mater	Université de Liège (Belgium)
Thesis	Contradiction et vérité (1979)
Doctoral advisor	Paul Gochet
Influences	Plato, Aquinas, Leibniz, Jeremy Bentham, Hegel, Marx, Frege, Willard Quine, Ferdinand Gonseth, Lotfi Zadeh, Kelsen
Academic work
Era	Contemporary philosophy
Discipline	Western philosophy
School or tradition	Analytic philosophy
Institutions	Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador, Universidad de León, CSIC
Main interests	Philosophy of law, logic, metaphysics, philosophy of language
Notable works	El ente y su ser, Hallazgos Filosóficos, Estudios Republicanos, Visión lógica del Derecho
Notable ideas	Cumulativism, Contradictorial gradualism, Ontophantics, republicanism, legal rationalism, natural law
Notes
Lorenzo Peña is a member of the Spanish Society of Legal and Political Philosophy and is a lawyer enrolled with the Madrid Bar Association of Advocates

Lorenzo Peña (born August 29, 1944) is a Spanish thinker. He is a philosopher, lawyer, and expert in logic. He also studies political ideas. His way of thinking is based on the ideas of an older philosopher named Leibniz. This applies to his views on reality and laws.

Life Story of Lorenzo Peña

Lorenzo Peña was born in Alicante, Spain, on August 29, 1944. His mother faced political problems from Franco's government. She was not allowed to return to Madrid until 1952.

In Madrid, Peña studied Greek and language with Francisco Rodríguez Adrados. He also learned ethics from J.L. Aranguren.

In 1962, he became involved in politics. He had to leave Spain in 1965. In 1969, he married María Teresa Alonso in Meudon, France. While in Paris, he studied with the historian Pierre Vilar. He also saw the big student protests in May 1968. He stopped his secret political work in 1972. After 18 years away, he returned to Spain in 1983.

Lorenzo Peña's Career

In 1974, Peña earned his philosophy degree in Quito, Ecuador. His thesis was about Anselm of Canterbury's argument for God's existence. His advisor was Julio C. Terán.

He then spent four years in Liège, Belgium (1975–1979). There, he wrote his main paper on a special type of logic. This logic deals with contradictions. He also earned a degree in American Studies.

After getting his Ph.D. in 1979, he went back to Ecuador. He taught at a university there for four years. Then he returned to Spain and taught at León University for three years. In 1987, he became a senior researcher at the CSIC. This is Spain's main academic research group.

He spent six months in Canberra, Australia, as a visiting scholar. He worked with Richard Sylvan and Philip Pettit. Later, he started focusing on the philosophy of law. He became a lawyer by earning a master's degree in 2007. He then got a Ph.D. in Law in 2015. In 2008, he joined the Madrid Bar Association. He reached the highest academic level in 2006.

In August 2014, he retired from his main job. But he was made an honorary professor at CSIC. He then helped lead a new project on legal and ethical responsibility.

Peña started the online journal SORITES (1995-2008). He also founded and led JuriLog. This group studies logic and law at the CSIC.

Lorenzo Peña's Philosophical Ideas

Lorenzo Peña has developed many unique philosophical ideas. These ideas cover how we understand reality, logic, and society.

Ontophantics: Understanding Reality

Ontophantics is a system of ideas Peña developed between 1974 and 1995. It mainly focuses on metaphysics, which is the study of what is real.

This idea started by looking at how language shows reality. Peña believed that what language shows is also what it says. He saw sentences and facts as changing processes, not static things. For example, saying a sentence is a journey from one idea to another. Facts are also like journeys, connecting one thing to another.

To explain these "journeys," Peña uses a special logic called paraconsistent logic. This logic allows for contradictions. Instead of saying contradictions are just in our thoughts, Peña believes they can exist in reality itself.

Another part of Ontophantics is rejecting the idea of "essentialism." This is the belief that things have a fixed nature separate from their existence. Peña believes that every existing thing is a fact. He also thinks that truth is the same as existence.

Ontophantics also includes a broad view of knowledge. It says that the difference between facts we know from logic and facts we know from experience is not clear-cut. Human knowledge builds theories and tests them against all our experiences. We then slowly change our theories. Peña does not believe in one single, perfect way to find truth.

Peña also believes that we can use induction (finding general rules from specific examples) even for logical truths. He thinks that the best logical system is the one that best explains what we observe. This idea also helps him argue for the existence of God.

Contradictorial Gradualism: Degrees of Truth

Peña's approach to logic is part of the "fuzzy" logic family. This family was started by Lotfi A. Zadeh. Peña's idea, called Contradictorial Gradualism, says that true contradictions happen when something only partly exists.

His fuzzy logic is different from Zadeh's main ideas. Peña believes in the "principle of excluded middle." This means that everything is either true or false, but it can also be true and false to different degrees. So, things can be partly true and partly false, or partly existing and partly not existing. This idea shows the influence of Plato.

Transitive Logic: A New System

To make his ideas clearer, Peña created several logic systems. He calls these "transitive logic," or TL. TL has two types of "not." One is a strong "not at all," which works like in regular logic. The other is a weaker "not," which depends on how much something is true.

TL is a mix of different logic types. It is partly like "relevant logic," but it has a different meaning. In TL, "A implies B" means "to the extent that A is true, B is true." If you remove the weak "not" and the "implies" part, TL becomes like classical logic.

Cumulativism: Building Up Reality

Cumulativism is Peña's philosophical idea developed from 1996 onwards. It builds on Contradictorial Gradualism. It adds six key points:

• All changes happen slowly, step by step. Each step keeps many qualities from the step before.
• Changes are either things coming together or falling apart. Reality is mostly about things gathering.
• It avoids seeing things as completely separate. It believes in groups in both reality and politics.
• It suggests that concepts are flexible and have changing boundaries.
• These groups are called "cumuli" or "cumulations." They are different from standard "sets." The main idea is that not everything in a group has to share the group's main feature.
• Cumulativism is about "conjunction." This means that if A exists and B exists, then A-and-B exists to that same extent. The properties of A-and-B depend on the properties of A and B.

Nomological Logic: The Logic of Law

Peña started working on the logic of duties (deontic logic) in 1979. He first followed standard ideas but added degrees and allowed for contradictions in rules. He soon felt this was not practical for real legal cases.

He realized that thinking of duty like "necessity" was a mistake. This led to a rule called "logical closure." This rule says if A must happen, and A leads to B, then B must also happen. Peña's Nomological Logic (NL) rejects this rule.

NL has several unique features:

• It rejects most standard rules of duty, except that what is required is also allowed.
• It accepts "deontic detachment." This means if A or B is allowed, and A doesn't happen, then B is allowed.
• It introduces new rules using ideas of "hindering" and "causation." For example, if something allowed causes an effect, that effect is also allowed.
• It adds a special "rule of liberty." If you can't prove something is forbidden, it must be considered allowed.
• It accounts for different degrees of what is allowed or required.

Peña believes that the rules of logic, especially for law, are found by studying how legal reasoning actually works.

Pluralistic Axiology: Many Values

Peña has suggested a "pluralistic axiology" to understand ethics. This helps deal with different ways of judging actions.

He divides ethical theories into two groups:

• Internalism: Values actions based on their own features.
• Externalism: Values actions based on their results. This includes "consequentialism," which looks at the outcomes.

Peña is a pluralist. He believes actions should be judged in many ways, using different values. Since his approach is gradual, ethical judgments have many degrees. He uses his fuzzy logic to say that actions can be both good and bad at the same time, but in different ways.

He also thinks that single actions are often too small to judge. Instead, it's better to look at a person's life over time. This includes their goals, choices, and habits.

Peña admits that having many values can make it hard to decide what to do. Sometimes there is no single "best" choice. In these cases, choices are based on which values a person cares about most. He also believes that ethical contradictions cannot always be avoided.

Social Evolutionism: Human Progress

Peña's philosophy of history argues that human progress is real. He believes that societies naturally get better over time. This happens because people combine their knowledge to improve welfare. They slowly build up material and intellectual things. They also create better laws and fairer ways of sharing.

Since progress is continuous, Peña believes there are no sudden "leaps" in history. Any division of history into periods is just for convenience. He does not believe in a fixed plan for history, like some other philosophers.

Peña believes human history is universal. We all share a common past and a common future. People have always learned from each other, sharing ideas and ways of doing things. Our shared planet also leads to a common direction for humanity.

Peña's ideas include the concept of "collective minds." These are like shared memories and plans that exist in a society. He knows that societies can face setbacks like wars or disasters. But he believes every society finds a way to start improving again.

Peña thinks that improving the future is the meaning of human life. He believes everyone has a right to a better life. This includes rights to food, work, housing, and freedom to move.

Republican Republicanism: The Role of the State

Peña's ideas about law are based on the idea of natural law. This means laws come from the nature of social relations. He believes humans are naturally social and form communities. The government's job is to work for the common good.

Peña rejects the idea that the State and civil society are completely separate. He believes this idea causes misunderstandings. For him, "Republic" means the State. So, "republicanism" means the State has an important public mission. It should promote government action and public resources. This is true as long as the State does not have a king or queen.

Peña uses the phrase "republican republicanism" to describe his political ideas. He believes the State should work for the common good by organizing public services. He argues that states have always been involved in many activities, not just keeping order.

This idea supports increasing the State's role. It suggests a planned economy with a strong public sector. It also supports gradually making property public. Private property should have rules that benefit everyone. This idea takes from groups like the British Fabian Society and German "chair-socialism." It also draws from Spanish philosophers who inspired the Spanish Second Republic (1931–1939).

Peña's republicanism rejects market economies. He believes that only the State can provide direction and unity. Without it, there is only competition, which he sees as harsh.

Peña's "republican republicanism" differs from other "neo-republican" ideas in four ways:

• It rejects monarchy, while others might not care about the type of government.
• It is "statist," meaning it supports a strong role for the State. Other groups see the public area as neutral for private activities.
• It recognizes that people have the right not to be involved in public issues. Other groups promote private virtues that encourage public participation.
• It believes in many values like welfare, love, liberty, equality, and living together. Other groups might focus only on freedom. Dealing with these many values means facing contradictions.

A key part of Peña's republicanism is the idea of an "Earthian Republic." He believes that regional groups divide humanity. He champions a united, worldwide community.

See also

In Spanish: Lorenzo Peña para niños