In this case report, we studied Theory of Mind and figurative language comprehension in a 7.2-year-old child, conventionally named RJ, with isolated and complete agenesis of the corpus callosum, a rare malformation due to the absence of the corpus callosum, the major tract connecting the two brain hemispheres. To study ToM, which is the capability to infer the other’s mental states, we used the classical false belief tasks, and to study figurative language, i.e., those linguistic usages involving non-literal meanings, we (...) used tasks assessing metaphor and idiom comprehension. RJ’s intellectual level and his phonological, lexical, and grammatical abilities were all adequate. In both the ToM false belief tasks and novel sensory metaphor comprehension, RJ showed a delay of 3 years and a significant gap compared to a typically developing control group, while in idioms, his performance was at the border of average. These outcomes suggest that RJ has a specific pragmatic difficulty in all tasks where he must interpret the other’s communicative intention, as in ToM tasks and novel sensory metaphor comprehension. The outcomes also open up interesting insights into the relationships between ToM and figurative language in children with isolated and complete ACC. (shrink)

SOUZA PINTO. L. E. A concepção biocêntrica e sua viabilidade na doutrina da igreja católica . Dissertação (Mestrado) 2013. 94f - Pontifícia Universidade Católica de Minas Gerais, Programa de Pós-graduação em Ciências da Religião, Belo Horizonte. Palavras-chave: Antropocentrismo. Biocentrismo. Catecismo da Igreja Católica.

Los términos “educación” y “formación” son cercanos, pero diferentes; la educación responde a un saber disciplinar concreto dentro de una estructura o sistema propio, mientras que la formación tributa a lo humano desde ámbitos no necesariamente sistemáticos. El siguiente artículo tiene como punto de partida la hipótesis de que la formación es un efecto que solo puede ser concebido a posteriori. Dicha hipótesis servirá de acicate para proponer una lectura del Menón de Platón que logre evidenciar algunas condiciones del diálogo (...) que posibilitan el efecto formativo. En primer lugar, se darán algunos presupuestos para comprender la hipótesis; luego, se establecerán dos condiciones que facilitan el proceso formativo: el λόγος y el acompañamiento (cada una de estas condiciones tendrá, a su vez, una división que las explicitará); y, por último, se determinará, en una tabla, si hay efecto formativo o no en los personajes que refiere el diálogo. (shrink)

O texto investiga os “indesconstruíveis” na filosofia de Jacques Derrida e sua relação com espectrologia, fé e messianidade. Partindo de uma imagem de ziguezague, ela própria presente em diversos ensaios derridianos, aproxima e desaproxima os indesconstruíveis (justiça, perdão, promessa, dom etc.) das ideias de indecidível e decisão, místico e espectral e, finalmente, imanente e transcendente. A partir do debate sobre a Era Axial, pergunta-se, então, se os indesconstruíveis derridianos podem mesmo postular a universalidade, apresentando como contraponto o tratamento da fé (...) secular em Hägglund e da espectralidade nas metafísicas ameríndias tal como descritas por Eduardo Viveiros de Castro. (shrink)

Este ensaio defende a hipótese segundo a qual a metafísica platônica não pode ser exclusivamente definida a partir de seu objeto, as Formas ou Ideias, mas também deveria ser tomada a partir de seu método, o qual se realiza lidando com as Formas como instrumentos metodológicos quer para definir as próprias Formas no nível inteligível, quer para definir as Formas instanciadas nos objetos sensíveis. Em um primeiro momento, argumento de modo geral que a metafísica platônica, por sua herança socrática e (...) parmenídica, é um método que tanto opera com quanto visa conhecer as Formas. Em um segundo momento, apresento o pano de fundo a partir do qual essa interpretação se torna possível: a metafísica platônica como investigação das condições que tornam possíveis as relações dos seres humanos consigo mesmos, com os demais indivíduos e com o mundo natural e histórico em que vivem. Também defendo que tais condições são apenas pesquisáveis através do diálogo filosófico, como um “espaço” privilegiado onde essas mesmas relações podem ser explicitadas. Em um terceiro momento, apresento um percurso textual para corroborar esta interpretação. Nesta parte, analiso inicialmente o nascimento do método das Formas a partir do elenchos socrático nos diálogos da primeira fase, mas especialmente tomando em atenção o diálogo Mênon. Depois analiso a introdução da noção platônica de filosofia como método hipotético no Fédon. Em seguida, passo a uma análise da apresentação do método dialético em República VI. Depois disso, analiso o método das Formas no Parmênides. Por fim, abordo como este método se configura nos diálogos Sofista e Político. Dentre as conclusões gerais que se pode retirar desta interpretação, acredito que uma das mais importantes é apontar que há uma necessária circularidade epistêmica (manifestada em diversos sentidos) na metafísica platônica como método das Formas. (shrink)

Wagner lamenta a seu mestre, no início do Fausto de Goethe: “Meu Deus! É longa a arte. E é tão breve nossa vida!”. Decerto a frase não poderia ser aplicada a Ernst Bloch, que nasceu em Ludwigshafen em 1885 e faleceu em Tübingen em 1977, aos 92 anos de idade, deixando uma obra de dimensões monumentais.

The aim of this work is to present the thesis “On the Ontogenetic Evolution of the Human Embryo in its Relations with Phylogenesis,” by Affonso Regulo de Oliveira Fausto, published in Brazil in 1890. To our knowledge, it was one of the first Brazilian academic works focused specifically on evolution. It was also the first doctoral thesis that addressed the topic of recapitulation in order to analyze what was then called the progressive evolution of the human species in tandem (...) with the embryological development of the individuals that would constitute the Brazilian “type.” In the present work, we analyze the author’s thesis in relation to its sources, concepts, as well as the country’s political context at the time of its publication. Fausto’s text, in which he explicitly recognized the influence of Ernst Haeckel’s recapitulation theory, represents a window to understand better a concept of nation based on science and on the idea of inexorable progress that was accepted in Brazil at the end of the nineteenth century. (shrink)

Mezcla de ensayo, comentario y memoria, recoge trabajos orgánicamente ensamblados sobre la acción de profesores franceses en la enseñanza de la filosofía en São Paulo durante la década de los años 60. Se destaca la obra de autores brasileños como Bento Padro Jr., Oswaldo Porchat, José Arthur Giannotti y Ruy Fausto. Un capítulo se dedica al historiador de la filosofía en Brasil, Joao Cruz Costa"--Handbook of Latin American Studies, v. 58.

Following David Hitchcock and Stephen Toulmin, this paper takes warrants to be material inference rules. It offers an account of the form such rules should take that is designed (a) to implement the idea that an argument/inference is valid only if it is entitlement preserving and (b) to support a qualitative version of evidence proportionalism. It attempts to capture what gives warrants their normative force by elaborating a concept of reliability tailored to its account of the form such rules should (...) take. (shrink)

Argumentation involves offering and/or exchanging reasons – either reasons for adopting various attitudes towards specific propositional contents or else reasons for acting in various ways. This paper develops the idea that the force of reasons is through and through a normative force because what good reasons accomplish is precisely to give one a certain sort of entitlement to do what they are reasons for. The paper attempts to shed light on what it is to have a reason, how the sort (...) of entitlement arising from reasons differs from other species of entitlement and how the norms by which such entitlement is assessed obtain their status as norms. (shrink)

The paper surveys different notions of implicit definition. In particular, we offer an examination of a kind of definition commonly used in formal axiomatics, which in general terms is understood as providing a definition of the primitive terminology of an axiomatic theory. We argue that such “structural definitions” can be semantically understood in two different ways, namely as specifications of the meaning of the primitive terms of a theory and as definitions of higher-order mathematical concepts or structures. We analyze these (...) two conceptions of structural definition both in the history of modern axiomatics and in contemporary philosophical debates. Based on that, we give a systematic assessment of the underlying semantics of these two ways of understanding the definiens of such definitions, by considering alternative model-theoretic and inferential accounts of meaning. (shrink)

In the first part of this essay, I develop the argument that Michel Foucault's work should be read with geographical and topological ideas in mind. I argue that Foucault's archeology and genealogy are fundamentally determined by spatial, topological, geographical, and geometrical metaphors and concepts. This spatial dimension of genealogy is explicitly related to racism and the regimes that domesticate agents through the practices, institutions and ideologies of racialization. The second part offers a genealogical reading of US history and spatiality in (...) terms of its racial institutions. I suggest that if we want to read the US geographies of topographies and cartographies of racism in a Foucauldian manner, then we must focus on plantations, ghettos, and prisons as the spaces‐institutions‐geographies that consolidated the racial matrix of US polity. My goal is to acculturate Foucauldian racial genealogy to the US racial matrix, and, conversely, to read US geo‐history in terms of racializing spatialities. (shrink)

Until now, North American and European philosophies have been engaged in debates about the possibility of a postmetaphysical philosophy and the consequences of the linguistic turn for the assessment of modernity; they have done so, however, without departing from the narrow horizons of their respective nationalistic perspectives. In this incisive critique, Dussel demonstrates how most of thse philosophies have either failed to give historically faithful analyses of the genesis of the "myth" of modernity, or have never engaged in a serious (...) questioning of their own Eurocentric presuppositions. He shows how North American and European philosophers have presupposed a no-longer-acceptable philosophy of history that has led them to fall into a "developmental fallacy," the belief that there is a linear sequence that moves from the premodern, underdeveloped, or on the way to industrialization, to the modern, developed, and industrialized. (shrink)

This paper presents a specific concept of the legal system, bringing a contribution to the Theory of Law, from the line of analysis of the Semiotics of Law. The entire methodological approach of this concept is based on the contributions of the École de Paris, from a theoretical-semiotic perspective derived from the studies of Algirdas Julien Greimas. The analysis seeks to further and qualify previous studies and publications, and focuses on the task of presenting the concept of juridicity, deriving the (...) description of the concept of the legal system from it, understood as a set of connections between legal texts. Consequently, the paper presents a Mesh Model for the description of the legal system, replacing the positivist concept of the Pyramid Model, through restoring the relationship between Law and Moral, between Law and Society and Law and Justice. Throughout the theoretical explanation, the paper tries to trace, develop and qualify the main points with arguments that distinguish the operation of the legal system, such as the concentric movement, micro-universes of meaning, discursive practices, the task of legal actors, dynamic inter-textuality, the role of interpretation, the process of the production of legal meaning and the search for textual justice. (shrink)

Manuale di filosofia, a c. di F. Palchetti, vol. I.

Pragmatics is the theory of conversation; more specifically, pragmatics is the discipline that studies linguistic rationality. This concept has to be interpreted as the instrumental coherence betweencommunicative goals and means. Therefore, pragmatics is essentially about the relations of relevance between utterances and contexts, understanding these as sets of beliefs held by the speaker and eventually shared by the hearer, and not as the set of objective features surrounding communicative interaction.

In March 2021, the Spanish Congress approved the law regulating euthanasia, that regulates both euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide (PAS). In this article, we analyse the Spanish law regulating euthanasia and PAS, comparing it with the rest of the European laws on euthanasia and PAS (Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg). Identified strengths of the Spanish law, with respect to other norms, are that it is a law with many safeguards, which broadly recognises professionals’ right to conscientious objection and the specification that it (...) makes on the prior comprehensive care of the patient, including the approach to care dependency. Regarding its shortcomings, the law does not differentiate well between euthanasia and PAS; it barely assigns a role to the healthcare team as a whole (similar to other regulations); it does not clarify the functions of the different professionals involved; it does not detail the specific composition and duration of theevaluation commission; it has not been accompanied by a prior or simultaneous regulation of palliative care; and, lastly, the period of time to implement the law is too short. (shrink)

This article deals with the concepts, processes, and antagonisms that are associated with the notion of postsecularity. In light of this article’s expanded interpretation of José Casanova on the secular and secularization, as well as thoughts on James A. Beckford’s take on public religions, five rubrics on the postsecular derived from critical theory and an understanding of ‘reflexive secularization’ are presented. This term focuses on secularization processes and how these practices unleash complementary as well as antagonistic tendencies, a confrontation of (...) normativities and specific social-empirical challenges. From this basis it is argued that social-empirical analysis should focus on non-naturalistic relations between individuals occupying structurally equivalent positions in narrative networks. A plurality of normativities are seriously considered as ideas circulating through social relations where the critical competence of the participants of such communication processes are provoked to subvert anything – including any normative positionality – as taken for granted. Moves towards the decolonization of the secular/postsecular dyad are emphasized, with ramifications for thinking about the urban, which point to the universal and authentic foundations of the human condition that are brought into play. (shrink)

A questão dos letramentos e da inovação demonstram-se fundamentais em períodos históricos como o atual, onde as práticas de ensino-aprendizagem tornam-se cada vez mais complexas, que requerem novas abordagens teóricas para compreendermos possibilidades alternativas de ensino. Tendo estas questões em mente, este artigo visa indicar relações possíveis entre o antifundacionismo, o pensamento de Paul Feyerabend e os letramentos científicos. Em um primeiro momento indicaremos questões relativas ao antifundacionismo, e em seguida verificaremos como tal questão se efetiva no pensamento de Feyerabend. (...) Finalizaremos avaliando como esta abordagem pode fundamentar novas práticas educacionais. (shrink)

In the Work that she presented at the 40th Annual Meeting of the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy, 7 March 2013, in Galloway, New Jersey, Sassen most tellingly began her keynote with a reflection on method. She spoke of “Before Method.” She spoke of the need to step back, and suspend our extant methods. Emergent social orders, or what she called, in her massive and transformational text Territory, Authority, Rights: From Medieval to Global Assemblages, the emergence of new (...) assemblages, requires that we rethink our old categories, or that we try to assess their usefulness or allow ourselves to countenance their obsolescence. The “before method,” and the invitation to step back, to bracket, or to .. (shrink)

Philosophical explorations of the processes of globalization, particularly in the context of Latin America.

The origins and development of the problem of mental causation are outlined. The underlying presuppositions which give rise to the problem are identified. Possible strategies for solving, or dissolving the problem are examined.

I make a review on the aplications of the Bohm-de Broglie interpretation of quantum mechanics to quantum cosmology. In the framework of minisuperspaces models, I show how quantum cosmological effects in Bohm’s view can avoid the initial singularity, and isotropize the Universe. In the general case, I enumerate the possible structures of quantum space and time.

Resumen: La tolerancia es un privilegio de los poderosos. Una persona puede tolerar sólo si tiene el poder para interferir con aquello que objeta. En este artículo analizaré las circunstancias en las que alguien tiene el poder para tolerar. Argumentaré que la respuesta debe incorporar consideraciones tanto prácticas como metafísicas. Específicamente, defenderé que alguien tiene el poder para tolerar cuando sus propiedades fundan tal poder en la situación práctica en que ella se encuentra, según es caracterizada por sus intereses prácticos. (...) Al hacerlo criticaré el análisis del mencionado poder realizado por Glen Newey. (shrink)

En este artículo se analiza la teoría del actor-red en relación con la comprensión del universo social en los estudios urbanos, la sociología y la metafísica, con un enfoque particular en el libro París: ciudad Invisible de Latour. Se sostiene que, para evaluar críticamente la contribución de Latour a la comprensión del espacio urbano, es necesario examinar la infraestructura filosófica subyacente en su trabajo. Se argumenta que la teoría actor-red aborda las discontinuidades y heterogeneidades como aspectos fundamentales para entender la (...) complejidad topológica de la dinámica urbana contemporánea. Se concluye que el enfoque de la teoría actor-red en la comprensión de la arquitectura y la geografía del universo social puede ser útil para el análisis crítico de la dinámica urbana en la sociedad actual. (shrink)

The Trika school, which is popularly known as Pratyabhijñā-darśana or Kashmir Śaivism is an absolutist and theistic school of Śaivism in the 9th Century. For the Trika school, the self is synonymous with pure consciousness, equated with Śiva. The path elaborated by the school is from self-ignorance to the realisation of pure consciousness. The Trika philosophy strives to answer two fundamental and interrelated questions. Firstly, understanding oneself as a reduced form of Śiva? Secondly, how does an individual attain “Śivatva”? In (...) this study, we explicate answers to these queries by resorting to the metaphysics of the Trika school along with interpretative textual analysis and present a model proposed by Bhoja Raja based on the three guṇas. This model attributed to Sāṅkhya philosophy and puruṣārtha could help to place the metaphysics of upāya in Trika philosophy in the context of the question of attaining “Śivatva”. (shrink)

Neste artigo abordaremos o tema da intuição e o método intuitivo no pensamento de Henri Bergson, tendo por objetivo mostrar a partir de quais problemas tal método pôde surgir e quais dificuldades ele tenta solucionar em seu desenvolvimento no decorrer de determinados textos do filósofo francês. Para alcançar o problema da intuição em Bergson, teremos que tratar brevemente de temas fundamentais de sua filosofia, a saber, a duração e o tempo; a intuição interior e seu contato com o Eu profundo; (...) o ser como mobilidade e a cisão de Bergson com a metafísica antiga, clássica, que vê o imóvel como essencial e a mudança como acidental. Discorreremos também acerca da metafísica bergsoniana e da ciência simbólica como formas de conhecimento do absoluto, seja ele intuitivo-espiritual ou analítico-material. Por fim, abordaremos o problema da expressão da intuição ou, em outras palavras, da comunicação da duração em termos espaciais; a dificuldade da linguagem e da inteligência de dizer o ser movente e a proposta bergsoniana de solução deste impasse através da introdução da metáfora, das imagens e dos conceitos flexíveis. Com o intuito de atender nossos objetivos principais e explicitar as dificuldades acima apontadas – mostrando de que forma Bergson as contorna –, além de esclarecer o funcionamento do método e do conhecimento intuitivo, iremos nos basear nos seguintes textos de Bergson: “A Introdução da Metafísica” (1903), a conferência intitulada “A Intuição Filosófica” (1911) e as duas introduções de “O Pensamento e o Movente” (1922), onde esses conceitos aparecem ou pela primeira vez, ou tomando desenvolvimentos decisivos. (shrink)

Each chapter of this dissertation develops a standard with which to evaluate and guide the improvement of a different node of a democratic system. In the first chapter, I consider the relationship between citizens, their environment, and the formal infrastructure of democracy. The standard for this node is democratic health, which is a feature of the social epistemic environment in which citizens operate. I argue that a democratically healthy environment is one that is conducive to the development of citizens’ epistemic (...) capacities to reason and communicate about their interests. I then demonstrate how political phenomena such as polarization pose social epistemic challenges to democratic health and argue that an epistemic conception of civic virtue can guide efforts to improve it. In the second chapter, I consider the relationship between representatives and their constituents under non-ideal conditions. The key standard for this node is systemic interest-responsiveness. I argue that observed public opinion and citizens’ values, commitments, and goals can stand in tension, and that representative democracies must be responsive to both factors. On this basis, I argue in favor of pairing independent administrative agencies with expanded forms of public input. In the third chapter, I consider how civic education can promote epistemic civic virtue. The key standard I develop here is the social epistemic public good. I argue that civic education can provide social epistemic benefits through its civic exchange function, which enables citizens to learn about the views and traditions of other citizens, and prepares them to effectively communicate with diverse others. Furthermore, I argue that this function can be pursued in the absence of widespread agreement about which values civic education should promote. (shrink)

How do scientists and theologians conceive new ways of mapping the world? Can parallels be found between the images they use, or the models they offer when new questions arise? I will explore Albert Einstein’s views on scientific imagination with the goal of contributing – at least within his own perspective – to answering these questions. Drawing on McGrath, I will first briefly describe Einstein’s desire for a unified vision of reality, the links between science and a ‘cosmic religion’, and (...) his overall ideas on transcendence. I will later further develop Einstein’s fundamental features of a cosmovision that grounds his work in physics, and encompasses his philosophical views on human existence and his general way of seeing the world. I will focus on Ideas and Opinions (1982), which will allow me to set the broad picture of his theory of everything and, at the same time, bring up the central aspects of Einstein’s ideas on the scientific imagination. Finally, I will briefly summarise my conclusions concerning Einstein’s views on the nature of scientific imagination as a mental device, especially regarding its twofold role in what I call ‘visual image play’ and conceptualization. (shrink)

Horizontal gene transfer advances bacterial evolution. To benefit from horizontally acquired genes, enteric bacteria must overcome silencing caused when the widespread heat‐stable nucleoid structuring (H‐NS) protein binds to AT‐rich horizontally acquired genes. This ability had previously been ascribed to both anti‐silencing proteins outcompeting H‐NS for binding to AT‐rich DNA and RNA polymerase initiating transcription from alternative promoters. However, we now know that pathogenic Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium and commensal Escherichia coli break down H‐NS when this silencer is not bound to (...) DNA. Curiously, both species use the same protease – Lon – to destroy H‐NS in distinct environments. Anti‐silencing proteins promote the expression of horizontally acquired genes without binding to them by displacing H‐NS from AT‐rich DNA, thus leaving H‐NS susceptible to proteolysis and decreasing H‐NS amounts overall. Conserved amino acid sequences in the Lon protease and H‐NS cleavage site suggest that diverse bacteria degrade H‐NS to exploit horizontally acquired genes. (shrink)