We examine the "Theaetetus" in the light of its juxtaposition of philosophical, mathematical and sophistical approaches to knowledge, which we show to be a prominent feature of the drama. We suggest that clarifying the nature of philosophy supersedes the question of knowledge as the main ambition of the "Theaetetus". Socrates shows Theaetetus that philosophy is not a demonstrative science, like geometry, but it is also not mere word-play, like sophistry. The nature of philosophy is revealed in Socrates' activity of examination (...) and his refusal to deny his ignorance about knowledge. (shrink)

We show a sentence and modal square of opposition and equivalence to be expanded into an hexagon according to oe suggestion from William of Sherwood. This expansión is permittedby two sentence and modal rules.The logical relations of the square allow us to formulate several theorems in order to show a glimpse of the Medieval Logic complexity.

According to John Rawls, the methods and conclusions of science—when these are non-controversial—constitute public reasons. However, several objections have been raised against this view. This paper focuses on two objections. On the one hand, the associational objection states that scientific reasons are the reasons of the scientific community, and thus paradigmatically non-public in the Rawlsian sense. On the other hand, the controversiality objection states that the non-controversiality requirement rules out their public character when scientific postulates are resisted by a significant (...) portion of the citizenry. The paper replies that both objections miss their mark. To the associational objection, it replies that the relevant test for a reason to be public is whether the reasons have been construed under the rules and constrains of a public frame of thought. Insofar as scientific methods and conclusions correspond to the principles of reasoning and rules of evidence that liberals understand as public, their associational origin is secondary. To the controversiality objection, it replies that the standard for a scientific argument to be regarded as non-controversial should refer to its degree of intra-scientific consensus, since ordinary citizens accept or reject scientific pronouncements conditioned to their particular comprehensive views. Nonetheless, a wide extra-scientific agreement on the epistemic virtues of the scientific method will be needed. The paper concludes that there is a good case to think about scientific reasons as public to the extent that scientific reasoning is a mode of inquiry that mirrors a central aspiration of Rawlsian political liberalism: having a public way of thought and an impersonal standpoint to adjudicate between competing claims. (shrink)

El artículo revisita la discusión entre Augusto Salazar Bondy y Leopoldo Zea hacia fines de la década de 1960 sobre la filosofía latinoamericana, con el objetivo de mostrar que la misma es el lugar de un diferendo: de pugna entre posiciones y representaciones disímiles, en algunos casos irreconciliables. Como se propone, lo que está en disputa en tal controversia, es el significado de la filosofía y de lo filosófico, en contextos de enunciación como América Latina. Para ello, se recorren diversos (...) núcleos conceptuales de la disputa, mostrándola como una discusión filosófica aún vigente. (shrink)

Se propone la posibilidad de una lectura psicoanalítica del Canallas de Derrida. Se intentará demostrar que la condición autoinmunitaria de la soberanía democrática, aquella condición aporética que la afirma y la niega a la vez, puede ser reconsiderada desde el psicoanálisis, así como también desde la interpretación que el mismo Derrida ha hecho de los conceptos de pulsión de muerte, rodeo y compulsión de repetición en La tarjeta postal. Ahora bien, parece posible extender esta relectura del problema autoinmunitario hasta ciertas (...) problemáticas asociadas a Lacan. En última instancia, sería posible una contribución lacaniana al problema ético-político de la autoinmunidad de la soberanía democrática planteada por Derrida. (shrink)

Neil MacCormick says that his "version of institutional theory" about the law 'is "non positivist", or, if you wish, "post-positivist"'. He is aware, however, that his work could be perfectly labelled, from the point of view of the history of legal and moral thought, as a form of natural law theory, at least by those who adhere to some version of natural law. It is an important merit of MacCormick that, rising above the label walls and wars, his theory of (...) law has taken into account the main insights of the great authors belonging to both traditions, such as Hans Kelsen and Herbert Hart, on the so-called "positivist" side, and some authors in the Thomistic tradition, particularly John Finnis, as well as "the writings of seventeenth and eighteenth century jurists concerning natural jurisprudence and the law of nature", on the so-called "natural law" side. Writing with such openness to all sources and insights, Neil MacCormick, one of the most eminent legal philosophers of our time, does not surprise us when he chooses to end his lifetime's work with an attempt to dig into the ethical foundations of all that he has written on law and politics. Practical Reason in Law and Morality is, in a way, his most significant book. He tackles here the deeper issues that he himself realised were left open and uncertain in his salient works on legal theory. He considered this book as the last one in a quartet on "Law, State, and Practical Reason". The quartet itself has become the culmination of a life devoted to the common good, in academia and in politics, among many other endeavours. Notwithstanding its flaws, I am convinced that Neil MacCormick's last book can be illuminating for all those students, and even professors, who go about doing legal philosophy without ever reading anything antedating Hart's Concept of Law. They tend to be confused by sophisticated forms of scepticism, luxurious discussions on law and morality and metaethics, and all sorts of distrust of truth in practical matters. Hence they will surely benefit from reading how a great legal philosopher of our time, once equally confused but always honestly open to rational deliberation and fair discussion, freed himself of at least half of his misunderstandings, and learned a lot by reading some natural law theorists old and new. (shrink)

This paper tries to propose a reading focused mainly on some of Foucault’s late works, developed since the first volume of his Histoire de la sexualité, from 1976. The aim of our reading tends to note that the distance between Foucault and Deleuze, even marked in an explicit rupture after the publication of that book, is not so much due to Foucault's “fascination” with power, or to his peremptory challenge of desire and its leakage power, or its supposed abandonment of (...) the detailed analysis of dispositifs. According to our reading, the distance taken by Deleuze will account, in this impasse, for the possibility of a resistance that is not exerted on dispositifs and power formations, and that projects the problem of power towards differents ways of life, according to a logic of modulation of life, very similar to that outlined by Foucault in his later years, and creating a singular consonance between both projects of thought. (shrink)

Following the proposal of a new kind of selective structural realism that uses as a basis the distinction between framework and interaction theories, this work discusses relevant applications in fundamental physics. An ontology for the different entities and properties of well-known theories is thus consistently built. The case of classical field theories—including general relativity as a classical theory of gravitation—is examined in detail, as well as the implications of the classification scheme for issues of realism in quantum mechanics. These applications (...) also shed light on the different range of applicability of the ontic and epistemic versions of structural realism. (shrink)

The status of scientific knowledge in political liberalism is controversial. Although Rawls argued that the noncontroversial methods and conclusions of science belong to the kind of reasons that citizens can legitimately call forth in public deliberation, critics have observed that the complexity and elaborateness of scientific arguments drive them away from the spirit of public reason, i.e., that which should reflect judgments that are the product of general beliefs and forms of reasoning found in common sense. In other words, scientific (...) claims remain as inaccessible as esoteric or religious reasons. This paper contends that this objection can be met by introducing a crucial assumption, drawn from W. V. O. Quine and the ‘naturalized epistemology’ tradition: that scientific reasoning and everyday reasoning are not two different epistemic categories but rather form a continuum. The former is just a filtered or refined version of the latter. Accordingly, evidence-based scientific reasoning is common to all citizens, regardless of their actual acceptance of specific scientific claims. Following the Quinean Assumption, political liberals may argue that, unlike religious or esoteric sources of knowledge, scientific reasoning is the expression of a cognitive operation that is fundamentally shared across comprehensive doctrines and politically reasonable individuals. (shrink)

As proposed for the emergence of modern languages, we argue that modern uses of languages (pragmatics) also evolved gradually in our species under the effects of human self‐domestication, with three key aspects involved in a complex feedback loop: (a) a reduction in reactive aggression, (b) the sophistication of language structure (with emerging grammars initially facilitating the transition from physical aggression to verbal aggression); and (c) the potentiation of pragmatic principles governing conversation, including, but not limited to, turn‐taking and inferential abilities. (...) Our core hypothesis is that the reduction in reactive aggression, one of the key factors in self‐domestication processes, enabled us to fully exploit our cognitive and interactional potential as applied to linguistic exchanges, and ultimately to evolve a specific form of communication governed by persuasive reciprocity—a trait of human conversation characterized by both competition and cooperation. In turn, both early crude forms of language, well suited for verbal aggression/insult, and later more sophisticated forms of language, well suited for persuasive reciprocity, significantly contributed to the resolution and reduction of (physical) aggression, thus having a return effect on the self‐domestication processes. Supporting evidence for our proposal, as well as grounds for further testing, comes mainly from the consideration of cognitive disorders, which typically simultaneously present abnormal features of self‐domestication (including aggressive behavior) and problems with pragmatics and social functioning. While various approaches to language evolution typically reduce it to a single factor, our approach considers language evolution as a multifactorial process, with each player acting upon the other, engaging in an intense mutually reinforcing feedback loop. Moreover, we see language evolution as a gradual process, continuous with the pre‐linguistic cognitive abilities, which were engaged in a positive feedback loop with linguistic innovations, and where gene‐culture co‐evolution and cultural niche construction were the main driving forces. (shrink)

Together with language, music is perhaps the most distinctive behavioral trait of the human species. Different hypotheses have been proposed to explain why only humans perform music and how this ability might have evolved in our species. In this paper, we advance a new model of music evolution that builds on the self-domestication view of human evolution, according to which the human phenotype is, at least in part, the outcome of a process similar to domestication in other mammals, triggered by (...) the reduction in reactive aggression responses to environmental changes. We specifically argue that self-domestication can account for some of the cognitive changes, and particularly for the behaviors conducive to the complexification of music through a cultural mechanism. We hypothesize four stages in the evolution of music under self-domestication forces: (1) collective protomusic; (2) private, timbre-oriented music; (3) small-group, pitch-oriented music; and (4) collective, tonally organized music. This line of development encompasses the worldwide diversity of music types and genres and parallels what has been hypothesized for languages. Overall, music diversity might have emerged in a gradual fashion under the effects of the enhanced cultural niche construction as shaped by the progressive decrease in reactive (i.e., impulsive, triggered by fear or anger) aggression and the increase in proactive (i.e., premeditated, goal-directed) aggression. (shrink)

JL his paper calls into question a conventional way of reading the passage concerning knowledge and belief at the end of book 5 of Plato's Republic. On the conventional reading, Plato is committed to arguing on grounds that his philosophical opponents would accept, but this view fails to appreciate the rhetorical context in which the passage is situated. Indeed, it is not usually recognized or considered important that the passage has a rhetorical context at all. Philoso phers typically reduce the (...) questions asked by Socrates and the an swers given by Glaucon in the presence of a large audience, to one continuous argument of Plato's. Unfortunately, this way of reading book 5 ignores two points that are crucial to its interpretation: (1) the Socrates-Glaucon dialectic is directed to hostile (not merely intel lectually opposed) interlocutors, and (2) the relation between Socra tes and his audience (Glaucon excepted) is one of antagonism.1 I shall argue that scholars have for a long time been trying to find more philosophical fruit in the passage than it has to bear, largely because they have misconstrued its role in the argument of the Re public. (shrink)

Traducción del artículo de María Elvira Díaz-Benítez, “Dark Room aqui: um ritual de escuridão e silêncio”, publicado originalmente por la Revista Cadernos De Campo, 16, 93-112 en el año 2007. La traducción al español es de su autora.

We propose a new interpretation of the equation E=mc² in special relativity by generalizing ideas of ontological emergence to fundamental physics. This allows us to propose that mass, as a property, can be considered to emerge from energy, using a well-known definition of weak ontological emergence. Einstein’s famous equation gains in this way a clearer philosophical interpretation, one that avoids the problems of previous attempts, and is fully consistent with the kinematic properties of special relativity, while yielding fresh insights concerning (...) the nature of mass. (shrink)

The objectives of the present study were to adapt a grief intervention program to family caregivers of patients with dementia, and assess its effectiveness in improving the symptoms of grief and other health-related variables. The intervention was based on Shear and Bloom's grief intervention program, with the necessary adaptations for use in the grieving process for a family member's illness. A total of 52 family caregivers of individuals with dementia participated. They were evaluated using a battery of self-report measures assessing (...) grief, overload, resilience, post-traumatic growth, experiential avoidance, health-related quality of life, and benefits of care. The results suggest that the program is effective in improving grief symptoms, caregiver burden, resilience, post-traumatic growth, and quality of life of family caregivers. It is necessary to create and implement interventions targeting caregivers' feelings and manifestations of ambiguous grief, because there is a lack of programs providing an efficient solution for the mental and physical health of caregivers, and because of the human and socioeconomic cost involved in neglecting this group. (shrink)

This article analyses an important category from Deleuze's philosophy – the notion of intensity – and explores its significance for Deleuze and the ways it can be used to think about poetic cinema. I use the concept of the intensive-image to define a cinematic style that dissipates narrative action in favour of more contemplative and sensory experiences, hence films that are able to turn onscreen reality into purely affective phenomena. The notion of intensity, I argue, does not allow us to (...) reply easily to the question about representation (i.e., “what is the film about?”), mainly because its images are indeterminate and flowing, combined in a multiple manner that excludes any simple reduction to signification. The general argument that follows, illustrated by a careful reading of key poetic texts, is that the focus on the intensive-image inspires readers to reconsider Deleuze's classification of the cinema into two separate periods as well as to understand the ways in which intensity finds expression in films that produce problems, displacements and provocations. In the words of Pasolini, this is the poetic film tradition which must be placed diachronically in relation to the language of the film narrative, a diachronism that, he says, would appear destined to be always more pronounced. In the last section of this article, I look at Luis Buñuel's Un Chien Andalou (1929) as an early case of the poetic image and draw on key theorists and filmmakers who have discussed the cinema's power of affection and intensity. (shrink)

Este trabajo explora las representaciones de las mujeres en una selección de manuales escolares empleados en las escuelas paraguayas durante el período 1989-2020, con el objetivo de analizar el papel histórico atribuido a las mujeres en los relatos escolares acerca de la Guerra de la Triple Alianza. Se sostiene que a pesar del proceso de revisión del currículo escolar y la política educativa iniciado con la transición democrática en 1989 persisten las representaciones hegemónicas de las mujeres ligadas al nacionalismo, afianzando (...) los roles tradicionales de género en el marco de una sociedad patriarcal. (shrink)

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

El modelo de desarrollo sustentable ha motivado la generación de una importante producción científica en distintos ámbitos. Tal ha sido el caso de la psicología que se ha propuesto comprender el papel de los factores conductuales y mentales implicados en la relación del hombre con la naturaleza. Si bien el emergente campo de la psicología ambiental se ha planteado objetivos pertinentes para el fomento de conductas sustentables, ésta ha operado desde modelos epistemológicos que tienden a mantener elementos de la cosmovisión (...) moderna relacionada con el deterioro ambiental. Se proponen las aproximaciones narrativas de la psicología como una alternativa capaz de subvertir el orden epistemológico. (shrink)

This paper presents a detailed contrastive frame semantic analysis of arriving events in English and Spanish, attested through a corpus study. The framework and methodology of our research follows the FrameNet II Research Project housed at ICSI. First, we present a formal description of the Arriving frame as a subframe of the Motion frame: arriving encodes a basic subpart of our conceptualization of motion, namely the transition from moving to arriving at a goal. Second, we carry out a cross-linguistic analysis (...) of this frame, based on a corpus study of English and Spanish arriving predicates. A first assumption would suggest that these two languages share a basic abstract frame description for arriving events. While acknowledging this, we yet show that at a lexical level the particular lexicalization patterns of each language influence the way speakers bring onto stage the different participants of the scene. We discuss this issue through a study of implicit frame elements, conflation and incorporation patterns, profiling, and deixis. Third, we briefly introduce the question of polysemy for those predicates that participate in the arriving frame. Arguably, the spatial meaning of arriving is the core sense from which a set of sense extensions derives, pointing to a wide range of independent frames (e.g. Cognition frame, Achievement frame, etc.) This fact can be attested in both languages in a parallel way. The different senses can be described synchronically in terms of frame semantics, while motivation for them is to be found in the cognitive processes of Metaphor (across frames), and Fictive Motion (within frame). (shrink)

Resumen: El artículo reflexiona sobre la especificación del juicio “conforme al derecho” como juicio justo por criterios legales y morales. La evolución de la filosofía jurídica desde la tesis de que el juicio justo del juez debe fundarse solamente en fuentes legales hacia la constatación de que tal juicio no es posible exige que la teoría analítica del derecho, la filosofía jurídica hermenéutica y la teoría del derecho natural se complementen para evitar el irracionalismo nihilista.

In this chapter, I focus on the faculties by which we gain knowledge, namely, sensibility and the understanding, as well as on the methodological framework within which Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz examines them. I stress the importance that the author gives to sensibility and the physiological apparatus that grounds and explains sensation.With respect to her conception of understanding, I will show that it is both the sign of man’s filiation with God and a faculty that displays deficiencies and (...) limitations with respect to the difficult task of attaining knowledge.Finally, I examine Sor Juana’s criticism both of the Neoplatonic method, which looks for a vision of the universe as a whole, as well as of the deductive method of the Aristotelian- Scholastic tradition, which attempts to reduce the unmanageable diversity of beings to some specific characteristics and laws.My conclusion is that Sor Juana shares with modern philosophers the critical attitude against tradition; she holds that traditional methods do not enable us to reach knowledge about either the remotest causes or the closest effects. On my view, Sor Juana takes an epistemological approach to philosophy, as do Bacon and Descartes, but she does not propose a new method; this is not because of some radical skepticism on her part, but because of the enormity of the task of the human mind achieving complete knowledge. (shrink)

Cristóbal Balbontin Dans Totalité et infini, Emmanuel Levinas s’attaque surtout à critiquer la dimension anonyme que comporte l’État. Proche du geste de Franz Rosenzweig dans L’étoile de la rédemption qui relie la fin de la Phénoménologie de l’esprit avec les Principes de la philosophie du droit, la critique lévinassienne vise surtout la philosophie politique hégélienne. Pourtant, chez Levinas — par opposition à Rosenzweig —, il ne s’agit pas seulement de dénoncer le devenir de la Raison dans la pensée occidentale, mais (...) sinon plus fondamentalement l’ontologie à partir de laquelle cette raison est devenue possible. Ce faisant, il s’agit de déceler les points de rapprochement aussi bien que les différences entre les deux philosophes à l’égard du politique. À ce propos, il s’agit de relever le tournant dans la démarche lévinassienne qu’implique une revalorisation du politique. (shrink)

In this work we discuss issues of ontological commitment towards one of the most important examples of contemporary fundamental science: the standard model of particle physics. We present a new form of selective structural realism, which uses as its basis the distinction between what have been called framework and interaction theories. This allows us to advance the ongoing debate about the ontological status of (quasi-)particles and quantum fields, by emphasising the distinction between quantum field theory serving as a framework, and (...) the standard model itself, which we argue is an interaction theory embedded within this framework. Following a discussion of what ontological commitments corresponds to each of these two classes, we argue that some of the previous proposals in the literature might have been misguided by the blending of quantum field theory and the standard model into an undifferentiated unity, and defend a moderate form of object realism with respect to particle-like entities. (shrink)

As a comparative politics scholar, it is more than a challenge to read and comment on the work of political theorists. The reason for this lies in the fact that comparative politics and political t...