Edició d'una important sèrie de treballs sobre el pensament i la literatura de Ramon Llull que es compten entre les peces fonamentals per a la moderna interpretació de Llull. La primera part recull íntegrament «El microcosmos lul lià», una obra ben coneguda.

Arguing for a cognition theory that radically rejects the passivity Aristotle attributes to the soul with regard to material things, Olivi has to assume that the soul is always on the alert, that is, that its attention to the body never disappears, even in deep sleep. This is for him the only way to explain why an intense sensation wakes us up without acting on the soul. He thus exposes himself to possible criticism from Aristotelians: his hypothesis is counter-intuitive and (...) seems to be contradicted by our experiencing eclipses of our awareness. I propose a defense of Olivi based on a ‘retort’, showing that Aristotelians must themselves postulate either, like Albert the Great, that the agent intellect is constantly in act, or, like Thomas Aquinas, that it exercises a continual surveillance of phantasms, even when we are not conscious of it. So they cannot deny Olivi the right to hypothesize a permanent attention of the soul. (shrink)

Ya en su tesis doctoral, Malabou (1996) empieza a elaborar, a partir de una relectura de Hegel, una noción que recorrerá toda su obra: el concepto de “plasticidad”. En este artículo analizamos las principales apariciones de dicho concepto en los primeros trabajos de la autora francesa. En ella, dialoga especialmente, y de manera declarada, con Hegel, Heidegger y Derrida, prometiendo un concepto de la esencia o la forma que incorpore la diferencia sin negarla. Si bien el concepto de “plasticidad” en (...) la obra de Malabou ha sufrido un giro, según el cual ha entrado en un diálogo abierto con la biología y, más concretamente, con las neurociencias contemporáneas, en el presente artículo veremos su estatuto antes de dicho giro. (shrink)

The Second Taiwan IUD Follow-up Survey, reported on here, is a representative sample of all IUD acceptors in Taiwan up to the middle of 1966. The data show that 30 months after insertion, 36% of acceptors are continuing users, on a first segment basis, and that if reinsertions are taken into account, the proportion increases to 45%. Compared with extensive clinic data from the city of Taichung, the island-wide termination rates are about 5% higher at 30 months, for first segments, (...) but the all segment rates show little difference at this duration. (shrink)

Summary The aim of this paper is to analyse the scientific relations between Germany and Spain during the Entente Boycott (1919–1926) and the German academic policy that fostered it. The study of the international relations of German science during the 1920s has been carried out using as a basis the archives of scientific institutions. Personal initiatives by individual scientists to establish relations have therefore not been taken into account. The relations between the scientific communities of Germany and Spain during the (...) 1920s indicate the importance of such personal relationships and from their transcendence at a political level. They also offer an example of how political strategies could dictate the politics of academic recognition. This paper is based on the analysis of sources found at the Foreign Office Archives in Berlin. It gives us a clear idea about the role of scientific relationships between the two countries in shaping their scientific policies. (shrink)

This is a complete exposition of a tight version of a fundamental theorem of computational complexity due to Levin: The inherent space complexity of any partial function is very accurately specifiable in a Π1 way, and every such specification that is even Σ2 does characterize the complexity of some partial function, even one that assumes only the values 0 and 1.

The Dominican theologian Durand of Saint-Pourçain (ca. 1275–1334), breaking from the wide consensus, made a two-pronged attack on concurrentism (i.e., the theory according to which God does more than conserving creatures in existence and co-causes all their actions). On the one hand, he shows that the concurrentist position leads to the unacceptable consequence that God is the direct cause of man’s evil actions. On the other hand, he attacks the metaphysical foundations of concurrentism, first in the version offered by Thomas (...) Aquinas and Giles of Rome, and then in a more general way. Against Thomas and Giles, he challenges Neoplatonic assumptions about causality and being. More generally, he establishes that God’s action and a creature’s action can be neither identical nor different, and thus cannot both be direct causes of the same effect. Without claiming that Durand’s series of objections are definitely unanswerable, we may at least observe that they have generally been underestimated (which earned him the lowly role of the mere foil of the concurrentist view in the history of philosophy) and are able to do considerable damage to concurrentism. (shrink)

Are these claims compatible: the future is contingent, and yet prophecies reveal the future? William of Ockham argues that they are in _Tractatus de praedestinatione_ (q.1, d.8) and in the _Fourth Quodlibet_ (q.4). But his two solutions to the puzzle of how prophecy and future contingency can be reconciled face significant objections that seem to undermine Ockham’s theory of future contingents. In this paper, I argue that the relevant objections lose their force once Ockham’s views on prophecy are properly understood. (...) In the first part of the paper, I closely examine the puzzle as well as Ockham’s solutions and the objections raised against him. In the second part, I counter the objections while offering an original interpretation of Ockham’s semantics of what I call “prophecies of choice.”. (shrink)

How much by way of economic reward is due to health care providers?Although this problem usually presents itself as a practical matter of policy, it has buried within it a number of philosophical issues, for it can be regarded as a question in the theory of economic justice. The formal principle of justice is that we should render persons what is due to them. But on what consideration in the case of health care providers can we make an assessment of (...) what is due?The answer we give to this question has significant implications for the ethical appraisal of the allocation of resources in the health care system. Some of the most difficult issues of ethical appraisal emerge when we consider the problems of allocating potentially life-saving resources between different groups of patients. Many of the most significant current issues in medical ethics—the role of QALYs, the meaning of equality and the economic evaluation of life—find their point of reference in the ‘tragic choices’ that are created when there are insufficient resources to meet apparently legitimate medical need. Yet, as Robert Evans has pointed out, it is a simple matter of accounting identity that health care expenditures must equal health providers' incomes. So, in asking how we limit or allocate costly health care resources, we are implicitly offering an answer to the question of how much we should pay providers. I hope by seeking an answer explicitly to that question to throw light on the problems that are raised when considering ethically the allocation of health care resources. (shrink)

ALBERT EINSTEIN’S CONNECTIONS WITH SPINOZA’S PHILOSOPHY The paper aims to analyze the influence of Baruch Spinoza’s philosophy on Albert Einstein’s work, in particular his physics. Einstein was a man of genius personality of contemporary physics, but we can see him as a prominent philosopher, too. He studied the philosophical works of Kant, Leibniz, Hume and other modern philosophers. But his most preferred thinker was Baruch Spinoza. Einstein knew very well Spinoza’s main book, Ethics. He accepted Spinoza’s concepts of (...) human being and the dignity of man in the history of the world. The concept of God proposed by the author of Ethics was very important for Einstein. Spinoza’s inspiring philosophy is present in Einstein’s vision of the universe and in his deterministic view on quantum mechanics. This problem is reflected in the paper too. Keywords: BARUCH SPINOZA, ALBERT EINSTEIN, CONTEMPORARY PHYSICS, UNIVERSE. (shrink)

Este artículo presenta una lectura de los elementos que caracterizan la doctrina acerca de la identidad del Padre y del Hijo, presente en la interpretación de Orígenes a Jn 1, 1-2 contenida en los libros I y II de su Comentario a Juan. La clave de acceso es la categoría de relación, la cual está de trasfondo a toda imagen utilizada por el Alejandrino para describir al Padre o al Hijo, y brinda a su teología un dinamismo impresionante, a la (...) vez que esboza soluciones a diversos problemas -como el de la generación del Logos- que marcarán de manera indeleble la doctrina trinitaria de los siglos posteriores. Con este fin, este trabajo se articula en dos partes complementarias. En la primera se muestra la identidad del Padre desde su relación con el Logos y, en la segunda, la identidad del Logos desde su relación con el Padre. (shrink)

I examine Bayle's infamous statement that Christian mysteries are not only "above" human reason, but are "against" it. I put it back in the context of 16th-17th century Reformed thought. I then discuss the relation between reason and faith according to Bayle.

Pierre Bayle shows that, in order to avoid devastating objections, materialism should postulate that the property of thinking does not emerge from certain material combinations but is present in matter from the start and everywhere—a hypothesis recently revived and labelled “panpsychism”. There are reasons for entertaining the idea that Bayle actually considers this enhanced materialism to be tenable, as it might use the same line of defence that Bayle outlined for Stratonism. However, this would lead to a view similar to (...) Locke’s superaddition theory, and I contend that such cannot be Bayle’s position because he embraces the Cartesian principle that each substance has only one principal attribute. This makes untenable, in his eyes, any system that conjoins thought with matter in the same simple substance. By contrast, this makes clear which kinds of metaphysics and epistemology panpsychists need to adopt to defend their view. (shrink)

This book describes how medieval Jewish Bible scholars sought to answer the question of what is meant by the Angel’s message from God to Abraham: ‘Now I Know’, as written in Genesis 22 verse 12. It examines these scholars’ comments on the nineteen verses in Genesis that tell the story of Abraham’s readiness to sacrifice his own son Isaac, the Aqedat Yiṣḥaq. It explores the answers they found to the question of what, indeed, this story is trying to tell us. (...) Is it a drastic way to condemn the practice of child sacrifice? Does it call for replacing human sacrifices with animal sacrifices? Is it a trial by which the Almighty tests the fidelity of one of His followers? Or is it His way to show the world the nature of true belief? The book starts with an introduction to familiarize readers with the many and varied manifestations of the Aqedah theme in Jewish culture and with the developments of medieval Jewish Bible exegesis in general. Next, it offers translations and analyses of the classical medieval Jewish Bible commentaries that deal with the exegesis of Genesis 22, exploring the many angles from which the Aqedah story has been understood. No less than five centuries of medieval Aqedah exegesis are reviewed, from Saadya to Isaac Abrabanel. These texts from the commentaries are combined with hermeneutical key passages by Moses Maimonides, Joseph Ibn Kaspi, Ḥasdai Crescas, and others, which were familiar to the minds of the exegetes, or which, conversely, reflect the impact of biblical Aqedah exegesis on religious thought. Together, the passages discussed illustrate the growth and development of Jewish Bible exegesis in dialogue with the rabbinic sources and with the various trends of thought and theology of their times. The consistent focus on the Aqedah constitutes a unifying theme, while the insights presented here greatly advance our understanding of the various developments in medieval Jewish Bible exegesis. (shrink)

In this paper I explore the ways and extents to which religious identifications and affiliations become instrumental political resources for ascertaining hierarchical relations among social groups and individuals, with extensive use of gendered metaphors referring to different categories of people as whether effeminate or truly manly, and actual women often used as a currency of exchange.