El artículo expone las condiciones de posibilidad de una comprensión de la psicoterapia que de cuenta de la similitud de resultados de técnicas diferentes. La psicoterapia no consiste en la aplicación de técnicas derivadas de teorías causales empíricas, sino que pertenece a la tradición del cuidado de la vida, sobre la que se diferencia en un aspecto esencial. Donde el cuidado de la vida ha supuesto la adopción de valores prudenciales o morales fundamentados en la naturaleza de lo ente, el (...) cuidado de la vida entendido desde la fenomenología no estándar supone preparar el acaecimiento de un sentido nuevo. En tanto el sentido se incuba en un estrato afectivo impersonal, la psicoterapia procede a preparar este sentido nuevo mediante el trabajo de remoción sobre lo instituido simbólica o habitudinalmente, hasta que la circulación afectiva en interfacticidad pueda dar lugar a un sentido nuevo que recoger, poner en palabras e incorporar, literalmente. (shrink)

This paper explores aspects of GPT-3 that have been discussed as harbingers of artificial general intelligence and, in particular, linguistic intelligence. After introducing key features of GPT-3 and assessing its performance in the light of the conversational standards set by Alan Turing in his seminal paper from 1950, the paper elucidates the difference between clever automation and genuine linguistic intelligence. A central theme of this discussion on genuine conversational intelligence is that members of a linguistic community never merely respond “algorithmically” (...) to queries through a selective kind of pattern recognition, because they must also jointly attend and act with other speakers in order to count as genuinely intelligent and trustworthy. This presents a challenge for systems like GPT-3, because representing the world in a way that makes conversational common ground salient is an essentially collective task that we can only achieve jointly with other speakers. Thus, the main difficulty for any artificially intelligent model of conversation is to account for the communicational intentions and motivations of a speaker through joint attention. These joint motivations and intentions seem to be completely absent from the standard way in which systems like GPT-3 and other artificial intelligent systems work. This is not merely a theoretical issue. Since GPT-3 and future iterations of similar systems will likely be available for commercial use through application programming interfaces, caution is needed regarding the risks created by these systems, which pass for “intelligent” but have no genuine communicational intentions, and can thereby produce fake and unreliable linguistic exchanges. (shrink)

Some metaphysicians believe that metaphysical modality is explainable by the essences of objects. In §II, I spell out the definitional view of essence, and in §III, a working notion of metaphysical explanation. Then, in §IV, I consider and reject five natural ways to explain necessity by essence: in terms of the principle that essential properties can't change, in terms of the supposed obviousness of the necessity of essential truth, in terms of the logical necessity of definitions, in terms of Fine's (...) logic of essence, and in terms of the theory of real definitions. I will conclude that the present evidence favours rejecting the hypothesis that modality is explainable by essence. (shrink)

To date, no definition of life has been unequivocally accepted by the scientific community. In frustration, some authors advocate alternatives to standard definitions. These include using a list of characteristic features, focusing on life’s effects, or categorizing biospheres rather than life itself; treating life as a fuzzy category, a process or a cluster of contingent properties; or advocating a ‘wait-and-see’ approach until other examples of life are created or discovered. But these skeptical, operational, and pluralistic approaches have intensified the debate, (...) rather than settled it. Given the failure of even these approaches, we advocate a new strategy. In this paper, we reverse the usual line of reasoning and argue that the “life problem” arises from thinking incorrectly about the nature of life. Scientists most often conceptualize life as a class or kind, with earthly life as a single instance of it. Instead, we advocate thinking about Earth’s Life as an individual, in the way that species are now thought to be. In this view, Life is a monophyletic clade that originated with a last universal common ancestor, and includes all its descendants. We can continue to use the category ‘life’ pragmatically to refer to similarities between various phenomena and Life. But the relevant similarities are a matter of interest and preference, not a matter of fact. The search for other life in the Universe, then, is merely a search for entities that resemble parts of Life in whatever sense astrobiologists find most appealing. This does not mean that the search for evolved complexity elsewhere in the universe or its creation in the lab are futile endeavors, but that debates over whether they count as ‘life’ are. Ironically, finally abandoning the concept ‘life’ may make our searches for evolved complexity more fruitful. We explain why. (shrink)

Recent work in the philosophy of biology has attempted to clarify and defend the use of the biodiversity concept in conservation science. I argue against these views, and give reasons to think that the biodiversity concept is a poor fit for the role we want it to play in conservation biology on both empirical and conceptual grounds. Against pluralists, who hold that biodiversity consists of distinct but correlated properties of natural systems, I argue that the supposed correlations between these properties (...) are not tight enough to warrant treating and measuring them as a bundle. I additionally argue that deflationary theories of biodiversity don’t go far enough, since a large proportion of what we value in the environment falls outside bounds of what could reasonably be called “diversity”. I suggest that in current scientific practice biodiversity is generally an unnecessary placeholder for biological value of all sorts, and that we are better off eliminating it from conservation biology, or at least drastically reducing its role. (shrink)

This book presents practical holism as a framework for understanding the ways in which our society and individual lives are affected by moral, legal, political, economic, and other considerations. Only nomadic thought is able to capture the interactions among all those crucial aspects.

We study the general problem of strengthening the logic of a given matrix with a set of axioms, using the idea of rexpansion. We obtain two characterization methods: a very general but not very effective one, and then an effective method which only applies under certain restrictions on the given semantics and the shape of the axioms. We show that this second method covers a myriad of examples in the literature. Finally, we illustrate how to obtain analytic multiple-conclusion calculi for (...) the resulting logics. (shrink)

The objective of the present review on the evolution of Green Chemistry, since its emergence until 2016, aimed an integrated vision of its progress along the three phases of its development: emergence, divulgation and consolidation. The methodology involved the analysis of a selection of bibliography on the evolution of GC collected from issues of the ACS symposia series; editorials in specialized GC journals; and commemorative birthday papers/editorials of these journals and of the GC itself. The analysis allowed to identify and (...) discuss the characteristics and conceptions of GC agents about fundamental concepts and procedures, in order to visualize and better understand the state of knowledge and the subject areas that make up the field. The main alterations identified in the evolution of GC were: it acquired a better defined identity, with more participation of academy and increased scope; was progressively framed in sustainability; has been aspiring to a holistic frame and to a change on the nature of the innovation for its implementation, from incremental to transformative. The analysis suggests that for supporting expansion and consolidation of GC the following aspects deserve attention: full validation of chemical greenness by metrics; better characterization of the frontiers of GC research areas/themes; increased integration between academy and industry; and penetration in chemistry curricula. Its basic philosophy being the practice of a chemistry more focused on the environment preservation, GC means a new stage in nature and in the history of Chemistry. (shrink)

In game-theoretic signaling models, evolution tends to favor perfectly precise signaling systems, but in the natural world communication is almost always imprecise. I argue that standard explanations for this discrepancy are only partially sufficient, and I show that communication is often ambiguous because signal senders take advantage of context sensitivity. As evidence, I make two additions to the signaling model: a cost for more complex signaling strategies and the ability to combine information in signals with independent information. Analysis and simulation (...) of the altered model shows that it leads to the predicted outcome of evolution favoring ambiguous signaling. (shrink)

Quantified hybrid logic is quantified modal logic extended with apparatus for naming states and asserting that a formula is true at a named state. While interpolation and Beth's definability theorem fail in a number of well-known quantified modal logics , their counterparts in quantified hybrid logic have these properties. These are special cases of the main result of the paper: the quantified hybrid logic of any class of frames definable in the bounded fragment of first-order logic has the interpolation property, (...) irrespective of whether varying, constant, expanding, or contracting domains are assumed. (shrink)

We show that basic hybridization (adding nominals and @ operators) makes it possible to give straightforward Henkin-style completeness proofs even when the modal logic being hybridized is higher-order. The key ideas are to add nominals as expressions of type t, and to extend to arbitrary types the way we interpret $@_i$ in propositional and first-order hybrid logic. This means: interpret $@_i\alpha _a$ , where $\alpha _a$ is an expression of any type $a$ , as an expression of type $a$ that (...) rigidly returns the value that $\alpha_a$ receives at the i-world. The axiomatization and completeness proofs are generalizations of those found in propositional and first-order hybrid logic, and (as is usual inhybrid logic) we automatically obtain a wide range of completeness results for stronger logics and languages. Our approach is deliberately low-tech. We don’t, for example, make use of Montague’s intensional type s, or Fitting-style intensional models; we build, as simply as we can, hybrid logicover Henkin’s logic. (shrink)

The lack of conceptual analysis within cognitive science results in multiple models of the same phenomena. However, these models incorporate assumptions that contradict basic structural features of the domain they are describing. This is particularly true about the domain of mathematical cognition. In this paper we argue that foundational theoretic aspects of psychological models for language and arithmetic should be clarified before postulating such models. We propose a means to clarify these foundational concepts by analyzing the distinctions between metric and (...) linguistic compositionality, which we use to assess current models of mathematical cognition. Our proposal is consistent with the scientific methodology that determines that careful conceptual analysis should precede theoretical descriptions of data. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

Studies have suggested that metaphors (Lawyers are sharks) and similes (Lawyers are like sharks) have distinct representations: metaphors engender more figurative and abstract properties, whereas similes engender more literal properties. We investigated to what extent access to such representations occurs automatically, during on-line reading. In particular, we examined whether similes convey a more literal meaning by following the metaphors and similes with explanations that expressed either a figurative (dangerous) or a literal property (fish) of the vehicle. In a self-paced reading (...) with a moving window paradigm, we presented participants with negated simile and metaphor main clauses (Lawyers are not (like) sharks) followed by explanations that also negated either a figurative (because lawyers are not dangerous) or a literal property of the vehicle (because lawyers are not fish). We found that vehicles (sharks) in metaphors were read significantly faster than those in similes. In addition, explanations negating a figurative property were read faster after metaphors, whereas explanations negating a literal property were read faster after similes. These results support the hypothesis that metaphors and similes rely on different interpretive processes, suggesting that similes access literal representations while metaphor access figurative ones in real time. (shrink)

We investigate dynamic operations acting over a knowing how logic. Our approach makes use of a recently introduced semantics for the knowing how operator, based on an indistinguishability relation between plans. This semantics is arguably closer to the standard presentation of knowing that modalities in classic epistemic logic. Here, we discuss how the semantics enables us to define dynamic modalities representing different ways in which an agent can learn how to achieve a goal. In this regard, we study two types (...) of updates: ontic updates (for which we provide axiomatizations over a particular class of models), and epistemic updates (for which we investigate some semantic properties). (shrink)

O artigo apresenta uma análise sobre o realismo político e os conflitos, a partir do pensamento do secretário florentino Nicolau Maquiavel. Para o autor de O Príncipe, o realismo é um guia para a ação política e entre os principais elementos do realismo, há a afirmação de que a realidade política é composta de conflitos. Maquiavel compreende o conflito como uma condição inerente a própria política. O conflito é fundamental para o equilíbrio das relações na vida política. O tratamento sobre (...) aos conflitos proposto pelo secretário florentino se coaduna com um ambiente democrático. O modelo republicano de Maquiavel não exclui nenhum segmento social. A república pensada por Maquiavel tem a marca da tolerância com as forças contrárias. (shrink)

The Whorfian hypothesis has received support from recent findings in psychology, linguistics, and anthropology. This evidence has been interpreted as supporting the view that language modulates all stages of perception and cognition, in accordance with Whorf’s original proposal. In light of a much broader body of evidence on time perception, I propose to evaluate these findings with respect to their scope. When assessed collectively, the entire body of evidence on time perception shows that the Whorfian hypothesis has a limited scope (...) and that it does not affect early stages of time perception. In particular, all the available evidence shows that the scope of language modulation is limited in the case of time perception, and that the most important mechanisms for time perception are cognitive clocks and simultaneity windows, which we use to perceive the temporal properties of events. Language modulation has distorting effects, but only at later stages of processing or with respect to specific categorization tasks. The paper explains what is the role of these effects in the context of all the available evidence on time cognition and perception. (shrink)

Reductionism has dominated science and philosophy for centuries. Complexity has recently shown that interactions—which reductionism neglects—are relevant for understanding phenomena. When interactions are considered, reductionism becomes limited in several aspects. In this paper, I argue that interactions imply nonreductionism, non-materialism, non-predictability, non-Platonism, and non-Nihilism. As alternatives to each of these, holism, informism, adaptation, contextuality, and meaningfulness are put forward, respectively. A worldview that includes interactions not only describes better our world, but can help to solve many open scientific, philosophical, and (...) social problems caused by implications of reductionism. (shrink)

This paper considers the way mathematical and computational models are used in network neuroscience to deliver mechanistic explanations. Two case studies are considered: Recent work on klinotaxis by Caenorhabditis elegans, and a longstanding research effort on the network basis of schizophrenia in humans. These case studies illustrate the various ways in which network, simulation and dynamical models contribute to the aim of representing and understanding network mechanisms in the brain, and thus, of delivering mechanistic explanations. After outlining this mechanistic construal (...) of network neuroscience, two concerns are addressed. In response to the concern that functional network models are non-explanatory, it is argued that functional network models are in fact explanatory mechanism sketches. In response to the concern that models which emphasize a network’s organization over its composition do not explain mechanistically, it is argued that this emphasis is both appropriate and consistent with the principles of mechanistic explanation. What emerges is an improved understanding of the ways in which mathematical and computational models are deployed in network neuroscience, as well as an improved conception of mechanistic explanation in general. (shrink)

In this paper, I propose that time representation should be classified as agent dependent motor-intentional, agent dependent conceptual and agent independent conceptual. I employ this classification to explain certain features of psychological and cultural time and discuss how biological time constrains such features. The paper argues that motor-intentional time is a crucial psychophysical link that bridges the gap between purely biochemical cycles and conceptual-intentional representations of time, and proposes that the best way to understand the transitions from biological to psychological (...) time is to characterize them as phase transitions that emerge on the global properties of a system regardless of specific aspects of the underlying processing units. With respect to hierarchical models of time, the paper claims that although the hierarchical organization of constraints limits the number of possible instantiations of temporal information, informational phases have principles of organization of their own. Based on these proposals, I conclude that since information assembles itself into the temporal behavior of an agent, it is more accurate to call the principles governing such a behavioral unity a phase, rather than a hierarchy. To support these theses, the paper draws upon research in biology, neuroscience, philosophy and psychology. (shrink)

Mineral species are, at first glance, an excellent candidate for an ideal set of natural kinds somewhere beyond the periodic table. Mineralogists have a detailed set of rules and formal procedure for ratifying new species, and minerals are a less messy subject matter than biological species, psychological disorders, or even chemicals more broadly—all areas of taxonomy where the status of species as natural kinds has been disputed. After explaining how philosophers have tended to get mineralogy wrong in discussions of natural (...) kinds, I show how minerals species don’t behave like natural kinds. They are defined on the basis of human intentionality, not merely natural distinctions. They aren’t ideal grounds for inductive inference. And they don’t form a system that divides nature along a set of equivalent joints. While this is a regrettable outcome to those of us who like the idea of science relying on natural kinds, I contend that mineralogy is doing just fine without a natural kind-based taxonomy, and may in fact be better off without one. (shrink)

This book offers an account of exile in terms of the perspectives of morality, politics, literature, anthropology, and history. It also explores the moral implications of exile and how it connects to the meaning of life.

Fruto de mis experiencias de trabajo, estas páginas presentan algunos de los problemas que encierra el uso de materiales jurídicos del siglo XIX, convertidos en fuentes documentales para el conocimiento del derecho liberal. La necesidad de utilizar un nuevo lenguaje para nombrar históricos cambios institucionales, la explosión de la prensa periódica en paralelo a nuevas ideas sobre la vigencia temporal de la norma, la pervivencia de formas orales de expresión jurídica sin perjuicio, falsa paradoja, del auge de la imprenta... presentan (...) varias dificultades al investigador, como las derivadas del empleo de las revistas y las obras de producción seriada, sin olvidar las incertidumbres que reodearon el tenor de los textos legales, y aun constitucionales. (shrink)

Like non-verbal communication, paralinguistic communication is rooted in anatomical and physiological factors. Paralinguistic form-meaning relations arise from the way these affect speech production, with some fine-tuning by the cultural and linguistic context. The effects have been classified as “biological codes,” following the terminological lead of John Ohala's Frequency Code. Intonational morphemes, though arguably non-arbitrary in principle, are in fact heavily biased toward these paralinguistic meanings. Paralinguistic and linguistic meanings for four biological codes are illustrated. In addition to the Frequency Code, (...) the Effort Code, and the Respiratory Code, the Sirenic Code is introduced here, which is based on the use of whispery phonation, widely seen as being responsible for the signaling and perception of feminine attractiveness and sometimes used to express interrogativity in language. In the context of the evolution of language, the relations between physiological conditions and the resulting paralinguistic and linguistic meanings will need to be clarified. (shrink)

Offers the first comprehensive survey of Mexican existentialism to appear in English. This book examines the emergence of existentialism in Mexico in the 1940s and the quest for a genuine Mexican philosophy that followed it. It focuses on the pivotal moments and key figures of the Hyperion group, including Emilio Uranga, Luis Villoro, Leopoldo Zea, and Jorge Portilla, who explored questions of interpretation, marginality, identity, and the role of philosophy. Carlos Alberto Sánchez was the first to introduce and emphasize (...) the philosophical significance of the Hyperion group to readers of English in The Suspension of Seriousness, and in the present volume he examines its legacy and relevancy for the twenty-first century. Sánchez argues that there are lessons to be learned from Hyperion’s project not only for Latino/a life in the United States but also for the lives of those on the fringes of contemporary, postmodern or postcolonial, economic, political, and cultural power. (shrink)

This book focuses on the emerging scientific discipline of astrobiology, exploring the humanistic issues of this multidisciplinary field. To be sure, there are myriad scientific questions that astrobiologists have only begun to address. However, this is not a purely scientific enterprise. More research on the broader social and conceptual aspects of astrobiology is needed. Just what are our ethical obligations toward different sorts of alien life? Should we attempt to communicate with life beyond our planet? What is “life” in the (...) most general sense? The current volume addresses these questions by looking at different perspectives from philosophers, historians, theologians, social scientists, and legal scholars. It sets a benchmark for future work in astrobiology, giving readers the groundwork from which to base the continuous scholarship coming from this ever-growing scientific field. (shrink)

Después de varios años e investigaciones sobre la educación y el nuevo paradigma científico hemos llegado a comprender que los gérmenes caóticos de la educación y la desescolarización están presentes en el día a día escolar, aunque ocultos, si no negados, por la cultura escolar. Debemos sacarlos a la luz y comprender su potencialidad e influencia educativa transformadora. Por muchos años buscábamos que la desescolarización de la escuela no implicara su eliminación, tal como lo propuso Illich ..

Il est difficile de mesurer et de fixer la portée historique de la décontruction en tant qu’événement. C’est peut-être même impossible, si le « messianique », tel que l’entend Derrida, en constitue la dimension véritable, puisqu’elle excède alors tout horizon et donc toute anticipation. Il reste qu’elle se traduit, ici et maintenant, par certaines prises de positions théoriques et politiques dont on peut et doit repérer les effets et dont il incombe à une pratique responsable de la philosophie de déchiffrer (...) les présupposés et les implications. Dans cette optique, il importe tout particulièrement de déterminer les modalités selon lesquelles la déconstruction, en tant qu’attitude et activité intellectuelle, reste endettée auprès de la critique, telle que Marx et Husserl ont prétendu la radicaliser. (shrink)

Supposedly, stubbornness on the part of scientists—an unwillingness to change one’s position on a scientific issue even in the face of countervailing evidence—helps efficiently divide scientific labor. Maintaining disagreement is important because it keeps scientists pursuing a diversity of leads rather than all working on the most promising, and stubbornness helps preserve this disagreement. Planck’s observation that “Science progresses one funeral at a time” might therefore be an insight into epistemically beneficial stubbornness on the part of researchers. In conversation with (...) extant formal models, recent empirical research, and a novel agent-based model of my own I explore whether the epistemic goods which stubbornness can secure—disagreement and diversity—are attainable through less-costly methods. I make the case that they are, at least in part, and also use my modeling results to show that if stubbornness is scientifically valuable, it still involves a willingness to change one’s mind. (shrink)