El artista menorquín Pascual Calbó Caldés, autor de una enciclopedia científica que ha llegado hasta nosotros con el nombre de Obras didácticas, pintó en el salón de la Casa Vidal una cenefa en la que aparecen representaciones alegóricas de la escultura, pintura, arquitectura, astronomía, música, literatura, matemáticas y agricultura. En este artículo mostramos algunos detalles relativos a las alegorías de las matemáticas y la astronomía que pueden escapar al ojo del observador común. Palabras clave: Pascual Calbó, Matemáticas, Pintura, Menorca, Siglo (...) XVIII. ABSTRACT The artist from Menorca Pascual Calbó Caldés, author of a scientific encyclopedia which has been preserved under the title of Obras didácticas, painted in the living room of the Casa Vidal a frieze in which we can find allegorical representations of sculpture, painting, architecture, music, literature, mathematics and agriculture. In this paper, we present some details regarding the allegories of mathematics and astronomy that may scape the eye of the common observer. Keywords: Pascual Calbó, Mathematics, Painting, Minorca, 18th century. (shrink)

I propose in this paper a reflection, a self-analysis, about my extensive teaching experience, not from a formal point of view of the specificity of the program and the subjects of my courses, but about the singularity of the teaching activities. The commitment with the students, with the topic taught and with the Institution in which I have the honor to work, constitute the fundamental motive that leads and conducts my profession as teacher. My explanation displays ten items. Each of (...) them presents a speculation about one of the ideal elements of the good teacher all of us aim to be. For that reason this essay is not a positivist description of the teaching reality, but it expects to reconstruct the critical demarcation between the ideality which all of us try to achieve and the empirical reality that constantly pull us in the opposite direction. The coercion without coercions of the exemplariness pushes us to maintain alive the faith in the appropriation of the nature and soul of the ideal teacher. (shrink)

Focusing on early twentieth-century American anthropological discourse, this paper examines diverse epistemological approaches to integrating culture within a naturalistic framework. Leslie Alvin White’s materialistic and energy-based “culturology” will be contrasted with Louis Kroeber’s emergentist perspective. Through a detailed examination of some key epistemic stances, I will illustrate how American cultural anthropology grappled with the dual pressures of scientific naturalism and the epistemic autonomy of the cultural world. The conclusion argues for distinguishing between “naturalized culture” and “naturalization of culture,” suggesting that (...) within this distinction, naturalism reveals not merely as a philosophical stance, but as a historically contingent phenomenon. (shrink)

En la actualidad podemos observar –en algunos sectores cualificados de la Iglesia Católica– un tipo de interés por devaluar la fuerza reformista con la que el Papa Juan XXIII imprimió al Concilio Vaticano II desde su convocatoria (25 de enero de 1959). La celebración de este Concilio Ecuménico (1962-1965) provocó una ola de entusiasmo y optimismo dentro de la Iglesia, y no poca expectación en el resto del mundo. En el post-concilio encontraríamos luces y sombras. Incluso podemos escuchar voces (no (...) muy fuertes, pero desde instituciones significativas de la Iglesia) que indican que el concilio se equivocó al tomar ciertas posiciones reformistas dentro del cristianismo católico. Este artículo surge de este contexto y –declarando el Concilio Vaticano II como un regalo preciosode Dios a su Iglesia- desea ser una clara e inequívoca reivindicación de la “letra” y especialmente del “espíritu” que iluminaron este Concilio en la Iglesia Católica. La “letra” del Concilio sin su espíritu es un cuerpo muerto. El “espíritu” sin la letra, una fuerza verdaderamente ineficaz. (shrink)

It is certainly true that in early modern thought the emergence of a new science changed the image of the universe in a mechanistic way. It must be considered, though, that most of the main protagonists of this revolution (Kepler, Newton, Leibniz, ‘biologists’ like Leeuwenhoek, Hartsoeker, Hooke, Malpighi, Redi, etc.) still continued to consider the importance and the utility of a finalistic explanation of natural phenomena. Concepts like “function”, “self-organization”, “organism” have roots in early modern thought: not only from a (...) linguistic and semantic point of view. They were the basis of an epistemology in which different kinds of categories are strictly related. The aim of the paper is to take into account the relevance of the mechanical explanation of natural phenomena in Leibniz’s thought and at the same time to highlight the polarization between mechanical explanations and finalistic consideration that emerges in his philosophy. The specific aim of the paper is to analyze and to develop this kind of dialectic between “teleology” and "mechanism", with particular reference to the concept of “living being”. (shrink)

This paper analyzes the specific shift in the meaning of “civilization” that took place in texts and documents of early American philosophical naturalism. Particularly, it will focus on the specific role that naturalization plays in the edification of a newly secularized, science-oriented, and democratic society, as well as of a naturalized conception of culture and civilization. Indeed, as the work of many philosophers and intellectuals of the Forties highlights, naturalism represents not only the banner of a new idea of civilization, (...) but at the same time becomes the symbol of a powerful postwar ideology. (shrink)

This paper develops the very basic notions of analysis in a weak second-order theory of arithmetic BTFA whose provably total functions are the polynomial time computable functions. We formalize within BTFA the real number system and the notion of a continuous real function of a real variable. The theory BTFA is able to prove the intermediate value theorem, wherefore it follows that the system of real numbers is a real closed ordered field. In the last section of the paper, we (...) show how to interpret the theory BTFA in Robinson's theory of arithmetic Q. This fact entails that the elementary theory of the real closed ordered fields is interpretable in Q. (shrink)

Aim of this work is to dispel the myth of the "vagueness" of naturalism. Between the Thirties and the Forties, naturalism moves “from old Europe to dynamic America” (as the historian Larrabee said). The controversy with visionary and fascist European theories was indeed very strong in the academic culture of the Thirties and Forties. The idea was to oppose to the former the virtue of a liberal democracy, supported by the liberality of the scientific method.In short, the cultural fight was (...) between naturalism and metaphysics (considered as theology). Naturalizing the "spirit" was the great ambition of American naturalistic programs of the Forties. They culminated with the publication of the ideological manifesto “Naturalism and the Human Spirit” (New York, 1944), edited by the John Dewey's group of Columbia. From Ernest Nagel to Sydney Hook, Roy Wood Sellars, William Sheldon and Arthur E. Murphy, all prominent American philosophers took part, in one way or another, to the naturalistic project. This latter aimed to be more than a simple "doctrine", by presenting itself as an expression of a new “mental attitude”, a fresh way of considering traditional unsolved problems. All this lead to the production of a new form of rhetoric, which in turn carried with itself a hidden ideology. Objective rationality embodied by scientific procedures became the totem to play against everything that would present itself as “just-subjective”, metaphysical, all-encompassing. A new idea of philosophy began to emerge, one that was less metaphysical, more humanistic and democratic, and concerned itself with “restricted, but manageable questions” (E. Nagel). (shrink)

The word “organism” represents an original keyword of the early-modern philosophical world. As it was first developed by Leibniz, it seems to blend together two different conceptual paradigms: the Cartesian model of the “machines” and the Aristotelian legacy of the “individual natures”. According to the first, nature represents itself the prototype of any good mechanical functioning, but at the same time its inner development is explained by the occurrence of a normative dimension that rules the world of primitive forces in (...) the dynamics. For such reasons, the “organism” lexicon is affected by an internal stress that is extremely interesting to analyze for it seems to posit a normative turn acting from the within of a mechanically conceived notion of life. (shrink)

Half a Brain is Enough is the extraordinary story of Nico, a three-year-old boy who was given a right hemispherectomy to control his severe intractable epilepsy...

In this paper, I would like to focus upon two things. The first concerns the intertwining of naturalism and religion, namely the fact that early American naturalism defined itself as a “secular religion”. This expression sounds like an oxymoron, but the analysis of a dazzling text by Francis Ellingwood Abbot will help us to clarify the concept of “godless religion”, which will be taken up in the following years by all the major naturalists of the time. The second concerns the (...) power of the symbolic dimension of naturalism, especially in the debates of the 1940s. In those years naturalism was engaged in a battle for the survival of democracy. “Science”, “democracy” and “freedom” were not only concepts debated on a theoretical level, but they outlined a system of archetypes by virtue of which post-war liberal and democratic America would build a relevant part of its self-image. (shrink)

Trustful and trustworthy behaviors have important externalities for the society. But what exactly drives people to behave in a trustful and trustworthy manner? Building on research suggesting that individuals’ social preferences might be a common factor informing both behaviors, we study the impact of a set of different motives on individuals’ choices in a dual-role Trust Game (TG). We employ data from a large-scale representative experiment ( N = 774), where all subjects played both roles of a binary TG with (...) real monetary incentives. Subjects’ social motives were inferred using their decisions in a Dictator Game and a dual-role Ultimatum Game. Next to self-interest and strategic motives we consider preferences for altruism, spitefulness, egalitarianism, and efficiency. We demonstrate that there exists considerable heterogeneity in motives in the TG. Most importantly, among individuals who choose to trust as trustors, social motives can differ dramatically as there is a non-negligible proportion of them who seem to act out of (strategic) self-interest whereas others are driven more by efficiency considerations. Subjects’ elicited trustworthiness, however, can be used to infer such motivations: while the former are not trustworthy as trustees, the latter are. We discuss that research on trust can benefit from adding the second player’s choice in TG designs. (shrink)

En su Teoría postmetafísica del conocimiento, Antonio M. López Molina muestra detallada y rigurosamente que el vaciamiento sustantivo de la razón y, junto con él, el desmoronamiento de la vieja pretensión filosófica de acceder de manera privilegiada a la verdad (como al Bien o a Dios), no comportan su definitiva quiebra, sino más bien la urgencia de reelaborarla en términos falibilistas y procedimentales; con tal fin –y, a su vez, para asignarle a la filosofía el papel que le ha (...) de corresponder tras el ocaso de todas y cada una de las ilusiones metafísicas– analiza López Molina el concepto de acción comunicativa, capaz de imbricar a las ciencias positivas con el mundo de la vida y proveer el fin –ni utópico ni teológico– de una intersubjetividad no falseada, apoyada en relaciones simétricas de libre reconocimiento recíproco. (shrink)

We prove two conservation results involving a generalization of the principle of strict ${\Pi^1_1}$ -reflection, in the context of bounded arithmetic. In this context a separation between the concepts of bounded set and binary sequence seems to emerge as fundamental.

La tesis que deseo discutir en este trabajo es la siguiente: las ciencias humanas (ciencias del espíritu según Dilthey, ciencias histórico-hermenéuticas según Habermas) son posibles en la medida en que pueda ser epistemológicamente justificado el método que las hace posibles, a saber, la comprensión hermenéutica del sentido cuyo núcleo central lo constituye el círculo hermenéutico. Se trata, pues, de justificar epistemológicamente la hermenéutica como comprensión del sentido de las vivencias propias y ajenas, para lo cual es preciso analizar la reflexividad (...) y reciprocidad que impregna la estructura del lenguaje ordinario. En el diálogo que Habermas establece con Dilthey en Conocimiento e interés aparecen los suficientes argumentos para dicha fundamentación. Nuestro texto hará especial hincapié en los siguientes tópicos: distinción entre ciencias de la naturaleza y ciencias del espíritu, comprensión hermenéutica del sentido, lenguaje ordinario y reflexividad, especificidad del círculo hermenéutico, ciencia y contexto vital, y, finalmente, haremos un balance de la interpretación habermasiana de Dilthey a partir de las relaciones entre ciencias histórico-hermenéuticas e interés práctico del conocimiento. (shrink)

Este trabajo consiste en una reconstrucción de los motivos de reflexión en ese ámbito privilegiado de la experiencia filosófica al que de la mano de Habermas, vamos a denominar pensamiento postmetafísico, como superación mediadora de la eterna disputa entre el pensar metafísico y el pensar antimetafísico. En él desarrollaremos aquellas categorías empírico-trascendentales que van a constituir las condiciones de posibilidad de esta nueva experiencia filosófica, a saber, racionalidad procedimental, razón sin trascendencia, razón comunicativa, giro lingüístico y deflación de lo extracotidiano.

Knowledge and true relations represent the principal task of Theory of Knowledge. This paper argues about various solutions to the justification of knowledge, given by William James, Richard Rorty and Jürgen Habermas. For classic Pragmatism Knowledge and Truth converge with the idea of a guideline, direction and orientation with an effective value for men. The Newpragmatism represented by Rorty tries out the way of the widest possible widening of justification contexts, taking as last referent the features of a western liberal (...) culture. Habermas pleads for a strong idealization in his discussion with Rorty up to the ideal speech situation. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to explore the concept of Philosophy within the works written by Wittgenstein if we take into account the ambivalent sense of the term phármakon. Thus, it will be outlined a contest of paradoxes between, on the one hand, healthiness, sanity, and the adaptable confidence produced by western rationality materialized into objective science, and, on the other hand, sickness, insanity, the world of perplexities, and the realm of desire and death, essential to philosophical thought. Bearing (...) in mind last Wittgenstein’s approaches, we will understand the Tractatus both critical to the deficiencies of western Reason and imprisoned within them. But the “enchanting” power of western Reason, conducting to identify rationality and scientificity in that work, will be conjured in the last Wittgenstein through the opening of plural realms of rationality and of discourses. In this way, philosophical questions will be rescued from silence and absurdity. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is twofold. First, I would like to bring into the light the almost unexplored Sellars’s theory of particulars. Second, I would like to show its surprising degree of compatibility with the thesis supported by some contemporary tropists, Tropes, Universals and the Philosophy of Mind, Ontos Verlag, 2008; Moltmann, Mind 113:1–41, 2004 and Moltmann, Noûs 47:346–370, 2013). It is difficult to establish whether Sellars possessed an own theory of tropes, developed independently by the classical form it (...) took in Williams 1953, but as a matter of fact the peculiar features of his “complex particulars” model it is very much like Williams’s theory. So much so that to all intents and purposes it represents a tropes variation. One of its strengths is that it is not part of a constituent ontology, since it is essentially developed from a linguistic and phenomenological point of view. It is for these reasons that this theory manages to avoid some of the classic objections to tropes and it shows to be compatible with the argument of Jonathan Lowe’s “proper visibility” as well as with Friederike Moltmann’s exquisitely linguistic interpretation of tropes. (shrink)

The emerging field of neuroeducation, concerned with the interaction between mind, brain and education, has proved revolutionary in educational research, introducing concepts, methods, and technologies into many advanced institutions around the world. The Educated Brain presents a broad overview of the major topics in this new discipline: Part I examines the historical and epistemological issues related to the mind/brain problem and the scope of neuroeducation; Part II provides a view of basic brain research in education and use of imaging techniques, (...) and the study of brain and cognitive development; and Part III is dedicated to the neural foundations of language and reading in different cultures, and the acquisition of basic mathematical concepts. With contributions from leading researchers in the field, this book features the most recent and advanced research in cognitive neurosciences. (shrink)

Vertebrates respond to light with more than just their eyes. In this article, we speculate on the intriguing possibility that a link remains between non‐visual opsins and neurohormonal systems that control neuronal circuit formation and activity in mammals. Historically, the retina and pineal gland were considered the only significant light‐sensing tissues in vertebrates. However over the last century, evidence has accumulated arguing that extra‐ocular tissues in vertebrates influence behavior through non‐image‐forming photoreception. One such class of extra‐ocular light detectors are the (...) long mysterious deep brain photoreceptors. Here, we review recent findings on the cellular identity and the function of deep brain photoreceptors controlling behavior and physiology in zebrafish, and discuss their implications. (shrink)

Usually scholars think of Marvin Farber as an American pupil of Husserl and his figure is given historical and institutional credit. It is also said that his thought misrepresented the intentions of the master and that his idea of a naturalization of phenomenology was devoid of hermeneutical grounds. All this has fed the myth of his heresy, the idea that his philosophical proposal could be summarized as a deviation from the orthodox canon. In this paper the legitimacy of this perspective (...) is widely discussed. Is it really correct to think of him as a child of the phenomenological continental tradition transplanted on American soil? Or would it not be more fruitful to consider him, beyond the canon, as an American philosopher fully immersed in the epistemological debates of his time? The paper argues in favor of this way of interpretation, discussing Farber’s own theoretical proposal in conjunction with the ecosystem of the American philosophical history. (shrink)