Discourse markers such as ¿entendés?, imaginate, mirá, and ¿sabés qué? are used in coloquial speech by Medellín people to achieved different communicative goals. This paper first of all, aims at showing some examples taken from oral sources: recordings and interviews from PRESEEA-Medellín project used with a specific pronoun: vos, that is typical use in the area of study; on the other hand, analyzes their pragmatic roles on each context as a way to describe dialectal uses.

The human voice does not deceive. The one who is speaking is inevitably revealed by the singular sound of her voice, no matter “what” she says. We take this fact for granted—for example, every time someone asks, over the telephone, “Who is speaking?” and receives as a reply the familiar utterance, “It’s me.” Starting from the given uniqueness of every voice, Cavarero rereads the history of philosophy through its peculiar evasion of this embodied uniqueness. She shows how this history—along with (...) the fields it comprehends, such as linguistics, musicology, political theory, and studies in orality—might be grasped as the “devocalization of Logos,” as the invariable privileging of semantike over phone, mind over body. Female figures—from the Sirens to the Muses, from Echo to opera singers—provide a crucial counterhistory, one in which the embodied voice triumphs over the immaterial semantic. Reconstructing this counterhistory, Cavarero proposes a “politics of the voice” wherein the ancient bond between Logos and politics is reconfigured, and wherein what matters is not the communicative content of a given discourse, but rather who is speaking. (shrink)

Adriana Novoa and Alex Levine offer here a history and interpretation of the reception of Darwinism in Argentina, illuminating the ways culture shapes ...

Relating Narratives is a major new work by the philosopher and feminist thinker Adriana Cavarero. First published in Italian to widespread acclaim, Relating Narratives is a fascinating and challenging new account of the relationship between selfhood and narration. Drawing a diverse array of thinkers from both the philosophical and the literary tradition, from Sophocles and Homer to Hannah Arendt, Karen Blixen, Walter Benjamin and Borges, Adriana Cadarero's theory of the `narratable self' shows how narrative models in philosophy and (...) literature can open new ways of thinking about formation of human identities. By showing how each human being has a unique story that can be told about them, Adriana Cavarero inaugurates an important shift in thinking about subjectivity and identity which relies not upon categorical or discursive norms, but rather seeks to account for `who' each one of us uniquely is. (shrink)

This pathbreaking work pursues two interwoven themes. Firstly, it engages in a deconstruction of Ancient philosopher's texts--mainly from Plato, but also from Homer and Parmenides--in order to free four Greek female figures from the patriarchal discourse which for centuries had imprisoned them in a particular role. Secondly, it attempts to construct a symbolic female order, reinterpreting these figures from a new perspective. Building on the theory of sexual difference, Cavarero shows that death is the central category on which the whole (...) edifice of traditional philosophy is based. By contrast, the category of birth provides the thread with which new concepts of feminist criticism can be woven together to establish a fresh way of thinking. Cavarero develops a philosophical narrative which, by re-interpreting each of the four figures of ancient thought, uncovers several images of the female desire for self-representation. Plato himself had not forseen that one day female subjectivity would assert its autonomy, plundering and throwing into confusion the patriarchal text in order to tell another story. (shrink)

Throughout the history of Christianity, innumerable men and women have consecrated their lives to God in an exclusive and radical way, reproducing in their own lives the very life of Christ. With this, we are going to identify the presence, the fundament and the characteristics of the state of virginal life consecration within the early Church. We will also analyze its contribution and importance within the ecclesial and social spheres of that time. The witness of this form of life calls (...) the attention of the Church and the world to the dignity of human person and of love. It reminds us of its superiority in relation to other creatures and invites us to look towards future realities, where we find our final goal as Christian and human existence. (shrink)

_In _Diverse Families, Desirable Schools_, Mira Debs offers a richly detailed study of public Montessori schools, which make up the largest group of progressive schools in the public sector._ As public Montessori schools expand rapidly as alternatives to traditional public schools, the story of these schools, Debs points out, is a microcosm of the broader conflicts around public school choice. Drawing on historical research, interviews with public Montessori educators, and ethnographic case studies, Debs explores the forces that pull intentionally (...) diverse, progressive schools toward elitism. At the heart of Debs’s book is a thoughtful analysis of the notion of “fit” between parents and schools—an idea that is central to school choice, which is often marketed as an opportunity for parents to find the perfect fit for their kids. By exploring parents’ varied motivations in choosing these schools and observing how families experience—or fail to experience—a “good fit” _after_ having chosen a particular school, Debs makes an original contribution to the literature on school choice and sheds light on the dilemmas entailed in maintaining diversity in progressive charter and magnet schools. (shrink)

Words like "terrorism" and "war" no longer encompass the scope of contemporary violence. With this explosive book, Adriana Cavarero, one of the world's most provocative feminist theorists and political philosophers, effectively renders such terms obsolete. She introduces a new word—"horrorism"—to capture the experience of violence. Unlike terror, horrorism is a form of violation grounded in the offense of disfiguration and massacre. Numerous outbursts of violence fall within Cavarero's category of horrorism, especially when the phenomenology of violence is considered from (...) the perspective of the victim rather than that of the warrior. Cavarero locates horrorism in the philosophical, political, literary, and artistic representations of defenseless and vulnerable victims. She considers both terror and horror on the battlefields of the _Iliad_, in the decapitation of Medusa, and in the murder of Medea's children. In the modern arena, she forges a link between horror, extermination, and massacre, especially the Nazi death camps, and revisits the work of Primo Levi, Hannah Arendt's thesis on totalitarianism, and Arendt's debate with Georges Bataille on the estheticization of violence and cruelty. In applying the horroristic paradigm to the current phenomena of suicide bombers, torturers, and hypertechnological warfare, Cavarero integrates Susan Sontag's views on photography and the eroticization of horror, as well as ideas on violence and the state advanced by Thomas Hobbes and Carl Schmitt. Through her searing analysis, Caverero proves that violence against the helpless claims a specific vocabulary, one that has been known for millennia, and not just to the Western tradition. Where common language fails to form a picture of atrocity, horrorism paints a brilliant portrait of its vivid reality. (shrink)

This new reading of Jean-Jacques Rousseau challenges traditional views of the eighteenth-century political philosopher's attitudes toward women and his perceived pessimism about human experience. Mira Morgenstern finds in Rousseau an appreciation of the complexities and multidimensionality of life that allowed him to criticize various easy dualisms promoted by his fellow liberal thinkers and point to the crucial mediating role that women fulfill between the private and public spheres. Morgenstern sees Rousseau as an important contributor to the feminist thoughts and (...) concerns that animate so much of our public and private discourse today. While Rousseau is commonly seen as a patriarchal misogynist, Morgenstern finds evidence in his writing that belies much of this claim. Rousseau was very much a man of his time, but he also believed that women were the key to transmitting his ideals of personal and political authenticity, thereby transforming his theory from ephemeral ideas into practical reality. A careful evaluation of Rousseau's writings on women reveals his highly complex sense of reality, especially his awareness that the solutions to life's complex problems are often temporary and must be renegotiated over time. Rousseau is more persistent than most in highlighting the weaknesses and pitfalls of liberal political thought, whose fundamental characteristic is its categorization of life on the basis of dualistic categories: public and private, outside and inside, male and female. Ultimately, what makes Rousseau worth reading today, argues Morgenstern, is his ability to illuminate critical weaknesses in the dualisms of liberal political theory and his pointing out, if only by implication, alternative ways of reaching the full measure of our individual and communal humanity. In honoring the traditional liberal emphasis on individual liberty and self-development, Rousseau’s meditations on the proper aim of political life are especially helpful to those today who seek ways to expand liberalism's promise of freedom and authenticity, while not losing sight of the common threads of meaning and community that continue to bind us together. (shrink)

This article combines thoughts about childhood, visual culture and education. It is known that we live among multiple images that shape the way we see our reality, and researchers in the visual culture field investigate how this role is played out in our culture. The goal is to make some applications those ideas, to think about the relationship between the images and education. This article tries to grasp what visual culture is and in what ways presumptions about childhood generate and (...) are generated by this association. It also discusses the genesis of these presumptions and the images they generate through a philosophical approach, questioning the role of education in a culture tied to the media, and about how children, who are familiar with multiple screens, presage a new visual literacy. We see how images play a fundamental role in the way children give meaning to the world around them and to themselves, in the context of their local culture. Given this context, it is necessary to consider how visual culture is tied to the elementary school, and what challenges confront the generation of wider and more creative ways to approach visual framing in children’s education. (shrink)

The use of sensors has had an enormous increment in the last years, becoming a valuable tool in many different areas. In this kind of scenario, the quality of data becomes an extremely important issue; however, not much attention has been paid to this specific topic, with only a few existing works that focus on it. In this paper, we present a proposal for managing data streams from sensors that are installed in patients’ homes in order to monitor their health. (...) It focuses on processing the sensors’ data streams, taking into account data quality. In order to achieve this, a data quality model for this kind of data streams and an architecture for the monitoring system are proposed. Moreover, our work introduces a mechanism for avoiding false alarms generated by data quality problems. (shrink)

Este artigo apresenta o sentido da sinonímia entre potência da razão e liberdade humana na Parte V da Ética, a partir de uma análise de seu prefácio, axiomas e quatro primeiras proposições. No decorrer de nossa análise mostramos porque a potência da qual trata Espinosa não é a de uma vontade livre, mas se identifica à potência da razão ou intelecto em realizar um império sobre os afetos, sendo precisamente o exercício deste governo o que oferece sentido à idéia de (...) liberdade humana em Espinosa. (shrink)

The paper examines the meanings of the notion of reform. Is reform an act or a process; what is an object of reform and how is it performed; is the scope of its performance limited or does it permeate deeper social structures? The approach to reform in this paper is genealogical, through the analysis of the processes of institutionalisation of the prison in Great Britain in 18th and 19th centuries. Although the elaboration of these processes revolves around a particular era (...) and place, this micro-sample gives rise to conclusions that surpass historically conditioned analysis. The aim of this paper is to show that reform has to be understood as an expression and effect of a profound transformation of the political, as well as the complex, multilateral and dispersive process which penetrates into and alters extant social relations. (shrink)

Jerzy Stempowski and Lev Shestov — existentialism imbued with eastern melancholy. A short history of a friendship: The main objective of this article is to present the friendship between Jerzy Stempowski — Polish writer, essayist and Lev Shestov — Russian writer and philosopher. The article consist of three parts an and short conclusion. In the first part I focus on Stempowski’s predilections for Eastern Europe, and I also explore Stempowski’s complicated, though clearly evident, relation with existentialism. It is in this (...) context that I show both Stempowski’s close affinity with Shestov philosophy, and his evident antipathy to French existentialism. In the second part I attempt to answer the following question: why did Stempowski have such a strong aversion to Albert Camus’ work. In this part of my essay I briefly refer to a Serbian writer and dissident — Mihajlo Mihajlov. In the third part I explore Stempowski’s friendship with Shestov and I also sketch the ideological horizon they both shared. Moreover, I mention Shestov’s presentations at the philosophical conferences in Kraków and Berlin as well as his meeting with Edmund Husserl in Amsterdam. In the short conclusion to my article I suggest that Stempowski’s existentialism is an individual, original project even if his existentialism draws upon most of the major themes in philosophical treatises and literature of existentialism. His “existential project” is based on: 1. reason which rationally orders reality, 2. sympathy towards antirational and prophetic philosophy of Russian thinkers which he analyses from the positions of a professed atheist and 3. deeply-rooted humanistic values. (shrink)

This document presents the Bonn PRINTEGER Consensus Statement: Working with Research Integrity—Guidance for research performing organisations. The aim of the statement is to complement existing instruments by focusing specifically on institutional responsibilities for strengthening integrity. It takes into account the daily challenges and organisational contexts of most researchers. The statement intends to make research integrity challenges recognisable from the work-floor perspective, providing concrete advice on organisational measures to strengthen integrity. The statement, which was concluded February 7th 2018, provides guidance on (...) the following key issues: § 1. Providing information about research integrity§ 2. Providing education, training and mentoring§ 3. Strengthening a research integrity culture§ 4. Facilitating open dialogue§ 5. Wise incentive management§ 6. Implementing quality assurance procedures§ 7. Improving the work environment and work satisfaction§ 8. Increasing transparency of misconduct cases§ 9. Opening up research§ 10. Implementing safe and effective whistle-blowing channels§ 11. Protecting the alleged perpetrators§ 12. Establishing a research integrity committee and appointing an ombudsperson§ 13. Making explicit the applicable standards for research integrity. (shrink)

This essay focuses on anthropomorphism as both a form of hype and fallacy. As a form of hype, anthropomorphism is shown to exaggerate AI capabilities and performance by attributing human-like traits to systems that do not possess them. As a fallacy, anthropomorphism is shown to distort moral judgments about AI, such as those concerning its moral character and status, as well as judgments of responsibility and trust. By focusing on these two dimensions of anthropomorphism in AI, the essay highlights negative (...) ethical consequences of the phenomenon in this field. (shrink)

This essay answers two questions that continue to drive debate in moral and legal philosophy; namely, ‘Is a risk of harm a wrong?’ and ‘Is a risk of harm a harm?’. The essay’s central claim is that to risk harm can be both to wrong and to harm. This stands in contrast to the respective positions of Heidi Hurd and Stephen Perry, whose views represent prominent extremes in this debate about risks. The essay shows that there is at least one (...) category of risks – intentional impositions of risk on unconsenting agents – which can be both wrongful and harmful. The wrongfulness of these risks can be established when, on the balance of reasons, one ought not to impose them. The harmfulness of these risks can be established when the risks are shown to set back legitimate interests. In those cases where risks constitute a denial of the moral status of agents, risks set back agents’ interest in dignity. In these ways, the essay shows that there are instances when a risk can constitute both a wrong and a harm. (shrink)

Inspired by the Enlightenment readings of Hebrew biblical texts generated in the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries, Mira Morgenstern's _Reframing Politics in the Hebrew Bible_ goes beyond the pioneering interpretations of various biblical texts penned by such noted Bible students as Spinoza, Rousseau, and Angelina Grimké to present an introduction to the Hebrew Bible as a whole from the perspective of a modern-day political theorist. In doing so, it offers a brilliant thematic guide to the Hebrew Bible's most politically (...) salient passages, complete with text and commentary. Morgenstern's account of the significance of these ancient yet strangely modern texts will fascinate students of both ancient and modern political theory—as well as all readers of the Hebrew Bible itself. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: BACKGROUND: The governments and citizens of the developed nations are increasingly called upon to contribute financially to health initiatives outside their borders. Although international development assistance for health has grown rapidly over the last two decades, austerity measures related to the 2008 and 2011 global financial crises may impact negatively on aid expenditures. The competition between national priorities and foreign aid commitments raises important ethical questions for donor nations. This paper aims to foster individual reflection and public debate on (...) donor responsibilities for global health. METHODS: We undertook a critical review of contemporary accounts of justice. We selected theories that: (i) articulate important and widely held moral intuitions; (ii) have had extensive impact on debates about global justice; (iii) represent diverse approaches to moral reasoning; and (iv) present distinct stances on the normative importance of national borders. Due to space limitations we limit the discussion to four frameworks. RESULTS: Consequentialist, relational, human rights, and social contract approaches were considered. Responsibilities to provide international assistance were seen as significant by all four theories and place limits on the scope of acceptable national autonomy. Among the range of potential aid foci, interventions for health enjoyed consistent prominence. The four theories concur that there are important ethical responsibilities to support initiatives to improve the health of the worst off worldwide, but offer different rationales for intervention and suggest different implicit limits on responsibilities. CONCLUSIONS: Despite significant theoretical disagreements, four influential accounts of justice offer important reasons to support many current initiatives to promote global health. Ethical argumentation can complement pragmatic reasons to support global health interventions and provide an important foundation to strengthen collective action. (shrink)

W 1957 r. powstało Towarzystwo Rozwoju Ziem Zachodnich (TRZZ), którego celem było przybliżanie informacji na temat ziem leżących na wschód od Odry i Nysy Łużyckiej, które przyłączono do Polski po II wojnie światowej. Towarzystwo od 1959 r. posiadało swoją filię w Wyższej Szkole Pedagogicznej, a od 1967 r. także w Wyższej Szkole Inżynierskiej w Opolu. Skupieni w nich studenci uczestniczyli m.in. w wykładach i konferencjach poświęconych kwestii przed- i powojennych związków ziem zachodnich z polskością oraz problemowi dążeń RFN i ich (...) sojuszników do przywrócenia tych terenów zwierzchności niemieckiej. Studenci organizowali także wyjazdy i imprezy rozrywkowe. Działalność obu kół studenckich wygasła w 1970 r., po tym jak rozwiązano TRZZ. (shrink)

The precompetitive, competitive, and postcompetitive mental states of athletes are currently not sufficiently researched. Long-term exposure to stressors contributes to the formation of mental blocks and leads to various health problems. One of the factors that can explain the variability of athletes' reactions to stress is their personality. This study is the first to examine competitive anxiety, and guilt and shame proneness in the context of the reaction of football players to distress in sports. The study consists of 112 male (...) football players aged 16–24 who were divided into type D and non-type D football players according to scoring on the Denollet Scale. Football players also filled out the Sport Anxiety Scale and the Guilt and Shame Proneness Scale. The taxonomic approach was conducted to test and to examine differences in stressor intensity as a function of type D personality. A correlation, multivariate analysis of variance, and regression analysis were performed in the study. We found that type D football players were more afraid of failures in sports, felt more often autonomous excitement concentrated in the stomach and muscles, and showed more frequent concentration disruption than did non-type D football players. We also found that although type D football players were more likely to rate their behavior as negative and inappropriate, they showed a much greater effort to correct it than did non-type D football players. Negative affectivity and social inhibition of type D football players were positively correlated with competitive anxiety. In addition, we noted lower levels of somatic anxiety and lower concentration disruption for football players who used escape strategies to manage stress. The shame proneness subscale monitoring negative self-evaluation was also closely related to the concentration disruption of football players. We found that the examination of athletes by type D personality is necessary due to the fact that negative affectivity and social inhibition are significant predictors of competitive anxiety of football players, which explains their worries at 24.0%, somatic anxiety at 8.2%, and concentration disruption at 10.6%. (shrink)

This article critically examines John D. Caputo’s early ethical project, primarily as described in his work Against Ethics. The central theme of flesh in pain is crucial to his ethical approach. This paper highlights the positive aspects of his work while addressing its potential flaws.

ABSTRACT This paper deals with two cases of acquisition and construction of Van de Graaff accelerators in 1950s Latin America, at the National Autonomous University of Mexico and the University of São Paulo, respectively. A comparative approach allows us to appreciate the significance of this particular technology within scientific, cultural, commercial, and political processes. Van de Graaff accelerators appeared as an affordable technology to engage in experimental nuclear physics and to be part of the atomic age. The circumstances that motivated (...) physics communities in Brazil and Mexico to choose this specific technology took shape in close interactions with US institutions and scientists. These inter-American alliances involved precisely the main companies and groups that competed for the market of this technology around the world. These accelerators also intertwined with the building of campuses for two major Latin American universities, occupying then a singular place (physically and symbolically) within their execution. This paper engages with comparison for the common goal of going beyond frameworks and methodologies tied to the nation, while integrating the study of connections and interactions, as well as the interplay of multiple scales. (shrink)

This study investigates switching costs in landmark-based wayfinding using olfactory and visual landmark information. It has already been demonstrated that there seem to be no switching costs, in terms of correct route decisions, when switching between acoustically and visually presented landmarks. Olfaction, on the other hand, is not extensively focused on in landmark-based wayfinding thus far, especially with respect to modality switching. The goal of this work is to empirically test and compare visual and olfactory landmark information with regard to (...) their suitability for wayfinding including a modality switch. To investigate this, an experiment within a virtual environment was conducted in which participants were walked along a virtual route of 12 intersections. At each intersection, landmark information together with directional information was presented, which was to be memorized and recalled in the following phase, either in the same or in the other modality. The results of the study show that, in contrast to the no-switching costs between auditory and visual landmarks in previous studies, switching costs occur when switching modality from visual to olfactory and vice versa. This is indicated by both longer decision times and fewer correct decisions. This means that a modality switch involving olfactory landmark information is possible but could lead to poorer performance. Therefore, olfaction may still be valuable for landmark-based-wayfinding. We argue that the poorer performance in the switching-condition is possibly due to higher cognitive load and the separate initial processing of odors and images in different cognitive systems. (shrink)

Esse artigo é uma breve análise sobre o problema do mérito como critério para a reciprocidade proporcional segundo Aristóteles.

En este ensayo, nos proponemos explorar los diferentes significados de los conceptos de vivibilidad y vida en el pensamiento de Judith butler. si bien es crucial para su obra temprana —butler se refiere por primera vez a este concepto en su introducción del libro, El género en disputa de 1999—, el concepto en sí emerge con más claridad y elaboración en su obra tardía (Deshacer el género, Vida precaria y Apuntes hacia una teoría performativa de asamblea). nuestra pregunta principal sería: (...) ¿cuál es el hilo conductor que une las diferentes concepciones de vida en el trabajo de butler? ¿cuáles son los lazos entre la vida abyecta, invivible, precaria, indolora, desechada y desposeída? De estas dos preguntas surgen otras más: como la cuestión de gradación de vivibilidad — qué vida importa, y “cuánto,” y cómo pensar este tipo de cuantificación de algo no-cuantificable—; y la cuestión de la universalidad (todas las vidas importan). estas preguntas, obviamente, tienen que contar con evidencias bajo las cuales la vida es cualificada, calificada y contada como vivible. estas condiciones abarcan las normas que organizan las posibilidades de reconocimiento y los órdenes de reconocimiento tanto como la distribución diferencial de la humanidad. Y además engloban las maneras en las que estamos constituidos políticamente, pero también, las maneras en las que el “nosotros” se define como social y corporal. La cuestión de la vida vivible está, por ende, enmarañada con la problemática de la contraposición entre la voluntad individual y la idea del “nosotros”, que, como seres, necesitamos —en palabras de la propia butler— “para mantener y reproducir las condiciones de (nuestra) propia vivibilidad” (Deshacer el género 2004: 39). (shrink)

Introduction Introducing Accessibility theory 0.1 On the role of context Utterances cannot be processed and interpreted on their own. ...

In her response, Alfaro fleshes out two main questions that come out from her book The Belief in Intuition. First, what is the relation between Henri Bergson and Max Scheler's personalist anthropology, on the one hand, and politics, on the other? What kinds of political order and civic education would sustain dense moral psychology, such as the one she claims follows from their writings? Second, and more specifically, what theory of authority corresponds to the philosophical anthropology that we learn from (...) these authors? How can the “small-scale exemplarity” that Alfaro argues is articulated in their writings be an alternative to how we think today about charisma and emulation in the public sphere? In articulating these responses, Alfaro reflects on phenomena like uncertainty, education, and social media in the contemporary public sphere. (shrink)

The problematization of sense includes the historical and cultural horizon of the western culture, where it opens the possibility for an explosion of senses. In this modernity setting, the philosophical thought faces the crisis of the last fundamentation and the difficulty for translating, in terms of truth and racionality, the reflection in the field of philosophy and human sciences. In this context, there are at least two alternatives for modern philosophy- without resigning the pretension of universality- to find its own (...) historical time: the hermeneuthic and the dialectical criticism. The Paul Ricoeur thought, for whom hermeneuthical and critical are two necessary moments to the philosophical reflection, promotes the reconciliation between those two traditions of the modern philosophy. However, the thesis proposed in this essay is that the reconciliation strategies by Ricoeur correspond, in last term, to the construction of his own philosophical thought. It means the reconciliator movement of the Ricoeur thought is part of his own philosophical project: to do emerge a critical hermeneuthical and an ontologically founded ethics.La problematización de sentido integra el horizonte histórico y cultural de la modernidad occidental, donde se abre la posibilidad de una explosión de sentidos. En este escenario, el pensamiento filosófico se enfrenta a la crisis de fundamentación última y la dificultad para traducir, en términos de verdad y racionalidad, la reflexión en el campo de la filosofía y las ciencias humanas. En este sentido, existen por lo menos dos alternativas para que las filosofías modernas, sin renunciar a la pretensión de universalidad, se encuentren con su propio tiempo histórico: la hermenéutica y la crítica dialéctica. El pensamiento de Paul Ricoeur, para quien hermenéutica y crítica son dos momentos necesarios a la reflexión filosófica, promueve la reconciliación entre estas dos tradiciones de la filosofía moderna. Sin embargo, la tesis que se plantea en este ensayo es que las estrategias reconciliadoras de Ricoeur corresponden, en último término, a la construcción de su propio pensamiento filosófico. Es decir, el movimiento reconciliador del pensamiento ricoeurniano es parte de su propio proyecto filosófico, a saber, el de hacer emerger una hermenéutica crítica y una ética ontológicamente fundada. (shrink)

The main purpose of this study is the scientific practice of Edgard Roquette-Pinto at the National Museum of Rio de Janeiro during the 1910’s and 1920’s in the XXth Century. The article examines the relationship between laboratory science and nation building. Driven by Physicians-Anthropologists like Edgard Roquette-Pinto among others, the investigations performed at the Anthropology Laboratory there reveal the dynamic of the borders between Laboratory and Field Sciences, and the new biological parameters adopted at that time. The investigative agenda involved (...) plants, animals and human bodies, and it was related to the current Anthropology concept aligned with the debate of Nation construction. The physiological studies amplified the scientific exchange with different institutions, emphasizing cultural exchange between Brazil and Paraguay, and the role played by Edgard Roquette-Pinto there as he inaugurated the Physiological course at Faculty of Medicine at University of Asunción. (shrink)

The article approaches the attempts at theoretical reduction of the mental and the social and mantains that the reductionist projects are based on ontological and epistemological presuppositions that relate to an atomist vision of the world that grounds untenable humean conceptions of causality a..

This work offers a challenge to the orthodox view that descriptive rules are non-normative and passive in their role and usage. It does so by arguing that, although lacking in normativity themselves, descriptive rules can be sources of normativity by way of the normative attitudes that can develop around them. That is, although descriptive rules typically depict how things are, they can also play a role in how things ought to be. In this way, the limited role that this type (...) of rule can play as either a basis for the development of normative reasons, or as explanatory reasons for action is identified and clarified. One desirable outcome of the analysis is a more complete view of what descriptive rules are and how they are utilized by agents. (shrink)

Among various recent approaches to truth one should distinguish a large family of minimalist accounts, which emphasize that the notion of truth is less substantial than it was traditionally taken for granted. Some philosophers (including, among others, Crispin Wright and Michael P. Lynch) propose to combine this minimalism about the notion of truth with pluralism of some kind, namely the idea that "what property serves as truth may vary from discourse to discourse". Briefly, there is one minimal notion of truth (...) but many properties satisfying it. I consider and contrast two ways of elaborating this interesting and promising view, defended respectively by Wright and Lynch. For Wright the common minimal notion of truth does not express any single property; the notion is simply multiple realized by various properties in different discourses. Lynch amends this view by claiming that the common notion of truth expresses a single property after all: it is a supervenient role property. I argue that more minimalistic Wright's alethic pluralism has certain advantages over functional-supervenient alethic pluralism advocated by Lynch. (shrink)