Quantum mechanics seems to portray nature as nonseparable, in the sense that it allows spatiotemporally separated entities to have states that cannot be fully specified without reference to each other. This is often said to implicate some form of “holism.” We aim to clarify what this means, and why this seems plausible. Our core idea is that the best explanation for nonseparability is a “common ground” explanation, which casts nonseparable entities in a holistic light, as scattered reflections of a more (...) unified underlying reality. (shrink)

J. T. Ismael's monograph is an ambitious contribution to metaphysics and the philosophy of language and mind. She tackles a philosophical question whose origin goes back to Descartes: What am I? The self is not a mere thing among things--but if so, what is it, and what is its relationship to the world?

:Rawls ignited a debate in political theory when he introduced a division between the ideal and nonideal parts of a theory of justice. In the ideal part of the theory, one presents a positive conception of justice in a setting that assumes perfect compliance with the rules of justice. In the nonideal part, one addresses the question of what happens under departures from compliance. Critics of Rawls have attacked his focus on ideal theory as a form of utopianism, and have (...) argued that political theory should be focused instead on providing solutions to the manifest injustices of the real world. In this essay, I offer a defense of the ideal/nonideal theory distinction according to which it amounts to nothing more than a division of labor, and explore some scientific analogies. Rawls’s own focus on the ideal part of the theory, I argue, stems from a felt need to clarify the foundations of justice, rather than a utopian neglect of real world problems. (shrink)

First para: Before the 17th century, there was not much discussion, and little uniformity in conception, of natural laws. The rise of science in 17th century, Newton’s mathematization of physics, and the provision of strict, deterministic laws that applied equally to the heavens and to the terrestrial realm had a profound impact in transforming the philosophical imagination. A philosophical conception of physical law built on the example of Newtonian Mechanics became quickly entrenched. Between the 17th and 20th centuries, there was (...) a great deal of philosophical interest in probabilities, but probabilities were mostly regarded as having something to do with the management of opinion, not as having a fundamental role in science. Probabilities made their first appearance in an evidently ineliminable way in the laws of a fundamental theory with the advent of quantum mechanics. Quantum probabilities have come to be called ‘chances’ in the philosophical literature, and their interpretation has been one of the central problems in philosophy of science now for almost a century. There continue to be hold-outs that insist that there must be an underlying probability-free replacement for quantum mechanics and Bohmians have had some success in formulating a deterministic alternative to quantum mechanics, but most physicists accept that the probabilistic character of the quantum mechanical laws is likely to be retained in any successor theory. While physics has adjusted itself comfortably to the existence of ineliminably probabilistic laws, philosophy has not managed arrive at a stable interpretation of quantum probability. The difficulty is that there are a number of constraints that an interpretation of chance must satisfy, constraints that appear to be partially definitive of the concept and it proves to be extraordinarily difficult to meet them simultaneously. (shrink)

The preponderance of female stereotypes in various films has become intense. Regardless of film genre, its effect on media-saturated culture has become somehow profound. This has become a concern to many people especially to feminists. Hence, this film study is conducted to explore how the female lead characters are stereotyped in films particularly in select official James Bond 007 films. During the analysis, the researcher utilizes an adapted film analysis rubric. The results show that: 1) the leading female characters in (...) the three films analyzed are portrayed mainly as objects of Bond’s sexual desire while he establishes and maintains a chauvinistic role all throughout each film; 2) Bond engages in dualistic relationships with the lead female characters when he uses them to satisfy his own desires for a woman as a means to an end (as particularly exemplified and portrayed in the character of Countess Lisl in For Your Eyes Only); 3) the treatment of some female stereotypes in the three films analyzed is consistent, e.g. a particular stereotype of a lead female character as object of sexual desire is sustained all throughout the film. The study, therefore, concludes that the lead female characters in the select films are generally portrayed in oppressive stereotypes. Keywords: Mass Communication, lead female character, female stereotypes, James Bond007, descriptive design (qualitative film analysis), Philippines. (shrink)

The arrival of Buddhism to Uruguay is related to various historical and cultural factors, such as the democratic opening at eighties, the progressive globalization in the country, the break of post (modernism) with a hegemonic rationalist-positivist model, the emergence of so-called New Religious Movements and opening of goods symbolic-religious markets, generally aimed at middle and upper social strata with economic and cultural capital is conducive to the proposed use of existential and introspective way of life. In this paper we analyze (...) the arrival of the different Buddhist lineages in Uruguay (Tibetan and Japanese), and the historical and socio-cultural context which activates their emergency. (shrink)

RESUMEN: Aplicando una metodología hermenéutica intertextual, el artículo ofrece un análisis de diferentes momentos en la articulación del humanismo poscolonial, sistematizando los nexos conceptuales entre las propuestas de Fanon / Bhabha y Bhabha / Said. El artículo interpreta el humanismo poscolonial como una epistemología crítica que permite dilucidar los mecanismos de violencia cultural y epistémica inherentes a los proyectos y a las narrativas etno-nacionalistas, y plantea la posibilidad de un horizonte de ciudadanía intercultural en el contexto presente de crisis de (...) la Unión Europea posBrexit.ABSTRACT: This article offers an analysis of different moments in the articulation of postcolonial humanism through a systematization of conceptual nexus among the proposals of Fanon / Bhabha and Bhabha / Said, the article highlights the contemporary dimensions of postcolonial humanism. By doing intertextual hermeneutic analysis, the article interprets postcolonial humanism as a critical epistemology that elucidates the mechanisms of cultural and epistemic violence inherent to ethno-nationalist narratives and strategies, in the current context of postBrexit EU crisis.PALABRAS CLAVE: interculturalidad; etno-nacionalismo; humanismo poscolonial; democracia; derechos universalesKEYWORDS: interculturality; ethno-nationalism; postcolonial humanism; democracy; universal rights. (shrink)

J. T. Ismael's monograph is an ambitious contribution to metaphysics and the philosophy of language and mind. She tackles a philosophical question whose origin goes back to Descartes: What am I? The self is not a mere thing among things--but if so, what is it, and what is its relationship to the world? Ismael is an original and creative thinker who tries to understand our problematic concepts about the self and how they are related to our use of (...) language in particular. (shrink)

In 1687 Isaac Newton ushered in a new scientific era in which laws of nature could be used to predict the movements of matter with almost perfect precision. Newton's physics also posed a profound challenge to our self-understanding, however, for the very same laws that keep airplanes in the air and rivers flowing downhill tell us that it is in principle possible to predict what each of us will do every second of our entire lives, given the early conditions of (...) the universe. Can it really be that even while you toss and turn late at night in the throes of an important decision and it seems like the scales of fate hang in the balance, that your decision is a foregone conclusion? Can it really be that everything you have done and everything you ever will do is determined by facts that were in place long before you were born? This problem is one of the staples of philosophical discussion. It is discussed by everyone from freshman in their first philosophy class, to theoretical physicists in bars after conferences. And yet there is no topic that remains more unsettling, and less well understood. If you want to get behind the façade, past the bare statement of determinism, and really try to understand what physics is telling us in its own terms, read this book. The problem of free will raises all kinds of questions. What does it mean to make a decision, and what does it mean to say that our actions are determined? What are laws of nature? What are causes? What sorts of things are we, when viewed through the lenses of physics, and how do we fit into the natural order? Ismael provides a deeply informed account of what physics tells us about ourselves. The result is a vision that is abstract, alien, illuminating, and-Ismael argues-affirmative of most of what we all believe about our own freedom. Written in a jargon-free style, How Physics Makes Us Free provides an accessible and innovative take on a central question of human existence. (shrink)

Graphical AbstractPheomelanogenesis may have evolved as an excretory mechanism to remove excess cysteine, and in humans this might potentially confer a greater ability to avoid disease such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's disease, in which excess cysteine is a contributory cause.

There’s a long history of discussion of probability in philosophy, but objective chance separated itself off and came into its own as a topic with the advent of a physical theory - quantum mechanics - in which chances play a central, and apparently ineliminable, role. In 1980 David Lewis wrote a paper pointing out that a very broad class of accounts of the nature of chance apparently lead to a contradiction when combined with a principle that expresses the role of (...) chance in guiding belief. There is still no settled agreement on the proper response to the Lewis problem. At the time he wrote the article, Lewis despaired of a solution, but, although he never achieved one that satisfied him completely, by 1994, due to work primarily by Thau and Hall, he had come to think the problem could be disarmed if we fudged a little on the meaning of ‘chance’. I’ll say more about this below. What I’m going to suggest, however, is that the qualification is unnecessary. The problem depends on an assumption that should be rejected, viz., that using information about chance to guide credence requires one to conditionalize on the theory of chance that one is using. I’m going to propose a general recipe for using information about chance to guide belief that does not require conditionalization on a theory of chance at any stage. Lewis’ problem doesn’t arise in this setting. (shrink)

En la presente investigación se valoran las prácticas inclusivas de 6 1 docentes de educación básica de Colima, Sonora y San Luis Potosí adscritos a escuelas urbanas y rurales de México nominadas como exitosas. Se aplicaron varios instrumentos, como la GEPIA, la SACIE, el TEIP, el Cuestionario para Favorecer los Aprendizajes de Mitchell y el Protocolo C ODCA.

In the general project of trying to reconcile the subjective view of the world (how things seem from the perspective of the embedded agent) with the objective view (the view of the world from the outside, as represented, for example, in our best physics), analytic philosophy, especially in recent years, has been almost solely focused on sensory phenomenology.1 There are two very salient features of the subjective view that haven’t been explored even on the descriptive side but that present prima (...) facie problems at least as great as sensory phenomenology. One is agential phenomenology (the experience of ourselves as agents in the world), and the other is temporal phenomenology. 2 The problems presented by these cases are very different. I want to focus on temporal phenomenology, by which I mean the felt character of a life lived in time. And my goal here is mostly descriptive; I’ll be exploring the question of what it is like to be the kind of being that has a history, that experiences that history in stages, and that keeps a running record of that history as it unfolds. 3 My suggestion is going to be that there is a special phenomenology, not supervenient on the sensory phenomenology, that arises only in the representational setting created by autobiographical memory and that is central to the felt character of a life lived in time. 4 (by autobiographical memory here, I mean not simply what is sometimes referred to as episodic memory - mental images of past experiences - I mean an explicit, account of one’s own history, rendered in explicitly first-personal form. (the difference here is the difference between a perspectival representation centered on the self of the sort that visual experience gives us and an explicit representation of self, of the sort you have, for example when you translate visual experience into a first personal belief like “I am such and such a place, seeing such and such”).. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to present a renewed reading of ethical-normative debates on recognition of cultural differences, by interrogating the initiatives that have constituted the international minority rights framework. The article is divided into three sections: 1. The first section approaches an introductory definition of minority rights. 2. The second section presents the philosophical reading of Charles Taylor on minority rights, within the ethical framework of his communitarian conception of freedom and individual development. 3. The third section presents (...) the philosophical reading of Bhabha on minority rights, within the ethical framework of his humanistic critique to the political construction of cultural differences. (shrink)

En este artículo se investiga la índole y supuestos filosóficos básicos de dos perspectivas metafísicas y epistemológicas contrapuestas en torno a la célebre prueba ontológica de la existencia de Dios. Tales perspectivas son, por un lado, la esencia lista o realista fenomenológica, para la que, por admitir la objetividad y trascendencia de las llamadas "cualidades eidéticas necesarias", la prueba es válida y concluyente; por otro, la perspectiva existencialista o conceptualista, que, al negar tal objetividad y trascendencia, rechaza la validez de (...) la prueba. De este modo, la posición ante este problema metafísico fundamental puede constituir un criterio básico de diferenciación entre defensores y detractores del célebre argumento anselmiano. (shrink)

Nuestra intención en este artículo es exponer la concepción berkeleyana entorno al tan debatido problema de la filosofía de la modernidad que concierne a la relación, conocimiento y exterioridad. Éste constituye, en efecto, núcleo esencial de las filosofías de autores tan representativos de la época como Locke, Hume, Condillac y el propio Berkeley, entre otros. No obstante, la singularidad del planteamiento berkeleyano al respecto es tal, que bien merece por nuestra parte una reflexión antenta y por separado. Además, la influencia (...) que su aportación peculiar ejerció sobre determinados filósofos, como, por ejemplo, Condillac y Kant, y a través de ellos sobre buena parte de la filosofía posterior fue de tal índole, que sin el cabal conocimiento de ella no podría entenderse la relevancia y significación del idealismo gnoseológico en sus diferentes tipos y modalidades. En una primera sección, meramente introductoria, acometemos la exposición de la metafísica de Berkeley, destacándose sobre todo su teoría del inmaterialismo ; con ello se pretende subrayar en principio el carácter peculiar que forzosamente habrá de presentar su concepción de lo externo. El tratamiento de ésta constituye propiamente el contenido de la segunda sección, en la que, además de la identificación entre contenido sensible y realidad y de la apelación a la instancia divina como garante último de ésta, se destaca el papel preponderante que desempeña el sentido del tacto en el proceso de aprehensión de la exterioridad. (shrink)

Com o tema: Filosofia da Educação: é possível educação sem filosofar? O Curso de Filosofia da Metodista promoveu a Semana da Filosofia 2019. A proposta foi articular pressupostos e referenciais filosóficos e sua interface com a educação. Além disso, identificar a relação necessária entre essas duas áreas fundamentais para a formação humana.

: I’m going to generalize the points that L.A. Paul makes in her Transformative Experience and push them in a somewhat different direction. I will begin by talking about transformative experience in a generic sense and say how ubiquitous it is. Then I’ll distinguish that from the strict, specialized sense of transformative experience that Paul identifies. I will say why Paul’s focus on the strict and specialized sense allows her to arrive at a strong conclusion, but bypasses the more interesting (...) lessons which concern the importance of de se imagination and the possibilities for educating it. Keywords: Transformative Experience; Laurie A. Paul; Imagination; Decision Esperienza, trasformazione, immaginazione Riassunto: Intendo generalizzare le questioni sollevate da L.A. Paul nel suo Trasformative Experience, spingendole in una direzione differente. Inizierò parlando dell’esperienza trasformativa in senso generico, illustrando quanto questa sia diffusa. Quindi distinguerò questo senso generico di esperienza trasformativa da quello più ristretto identificato da Paul. Illustrerò poi le ragioni per cui la messa a fuoco di questo senso ristretto e specifico da parte di Paul le consente di giungere a conclusioni forti, evitando però i compiti più interessanti che riguardano l’importanza dell’immaginazione de se e le possibilità di educarla. Parole chiave: Esperienza trasformativa; Laurie A. Paul; Immaginazione; Decisione. (shrink)

Quantum mechanics is, at least at first glance and at least in part, a mathematical machine for predicting the behaviors of microscopic particles — or, at least, of the measuring instruments we use to explore those behaviors — and in that capacity, it is spectacularly successful: in terms of power and precision, head and shoulders above any theory we have ever had. Mathematically, the theory is well understood; we know what its parts are, how they are put together, and why, (...) in the mechanical sense (i.e., in a sense that can be answered by describing the internal grinding of gear against gear), the whole thing performs the way it does, how the information that gets fed in at one end is converted into what comes out the other. The question of what kind of a world it describes, however, is controversial; there is very little agreement, among physicists and among philosophers, about what the world is like according to quantum mechanics. Minimally interpreted, the theory describes a set of facts about the way the microscopic world impinges on the macroscopic one, how it affects our measuring instruments, described in everyday language or the language of classical mechanics. Disagreement centers on the question of what a microscopic world, which affects our apparatuses in the prescribed manner, is, or even could be, like intrinsically ; or how those apparatuses could themselves be built out of microscopic parts of the sort the theory describes.[1.. (shrink)

Huw Price has argued that on an interventionist account of cause the distinction is perspectival, and the claim prompted some interesting responses from interventionists and in particular an exchange with Woodward that raises questions about what it means to say that one or another structure is perspectival. I’ll introduce his reasons for claiming that the distinction between cause and effect on an interventionist account is perspectival. Then I’ll introduce a distinction between different ways in which a class of concepts can (...) be said to depend on facts about their users. Three importantly different forms of dependence will emerge from the discussion: Pragmatic dependence on us: truth conditions for x-beliefs can be given by a function f \ of more fundamental physical structures making no explicit reference to human agents. But there are any other number of functions ) ontologically on a par with x and what explains the distinguished role f plays in our practical and epistemic lives are facts about us. Implicit relativization: truth conditions for x-beliefs are relative to agent or context; the context supplies the value of a hidden parameter that determines the truth of x-beliefs. Indexicals: like implicit relativization except that the surface syntax contains a term whose semantic value is context-dependent. I suggest that Price’s insights are best understood in the first way. This will draw a crucial disanalogy with his central examples of perspectival concepts, but it will refine the thesis in a way that is more faithful to what his arguments show. The refined thesis will also support generalization to other concepts, and clarify the foundations of the quite distinctive research program that Price has been developing for a number of years. (shrink)

Dennett’s story “Where am I?” is used to set up the difficulty of locating the self in the natural world. The story is told from a first-person point of view in which the narrator maintains his identity across exchanges of brain and body, but there is no physical thing in the story that can act as bearer of his identity. The story seems to present a dilemma between Cartesian dualism and Dennett’s a “no-self” view. This chapter argues for a third (...) option. Prepersonal processes in the brain stabilize separable conceptions of self and world out of patterns in sensory information. The conception of self starts out as a mere sensorimotor point of view but gradually develops into something richer. Seeing how the first-person point of view arises is seeing how the self arises, because the self is nothing but the proper subject of a first-person point of view. (shrink)

Mechanisms occurring at the atomic level are now known to drive processes essential for life, as revealed by quantum effects on biochemical reactions. Some macroscopic characteristics of organisms may thus show an atomic imprint, which may be transferred across organisms and affect their evolution. This possibility is considered here for the first time, with the aim of elucidating the appearance of an animal innovation with an unclear evolutionary origin: migratory behaviour. This trait may be mediated by a radical pair (RP) (...) mechanism in the retinal flavoprotein cryptochrome, providing essential magnetic orientation for migration. Isotopes may affect the performance of quantum processes through their nuclear spin. Here, we consider a simple model and then apply the standard open quantum system approach to the spin dynamics of cryptochrome RP. We changed the spin quantum number (I) and g‐factor of hydrogen and nitrogen isotopes to investigate their effect on RP's yield and magnetic sensitivity. Strong differences arose between isotopes with I = 1 and I = 1/2 in their contribution to cryptochrome magnetic sensitivity, particularly regarding Earth's magnetic field strengths (25–65 µT). In most cases, isotopic substitution improved RP's magnetic sensitivity. Migratory behaviour may thus have been favoured in animals with certain isotopic compositions of cryptochrome. (shrink)

Dennett argues that the decentralized view of human cognitive organization finding increasing support in parts of cognitive science undermines talk of an inner self. On his view, the causal underpinnings of behavior are distributed across a collection of autonomous subsystems operating without any centralized supervision. Selves are fictions contrived to simplify description and facilitate prediction of behavior with no real correlate inside the mind. Dennett often uses an analogy with termite colonies whose behavior looks organized and purposeful to the external (...) eye, but which is actually the emergent product of uncoordinated activity of separate components marching to the beat of their individual drums. I examine the cognitive organization of a system steering by an internal model of self and environment, and argue that it provides a model that lies between the image of mind as termite colony and a naïve Cartesianism that views the self as inner substance. (shrink)

Ayahuasca is a psychoactive brew from Amazonas, popularized in the last decades in part through transnational religious networks, but also due to interest in exploring spirituality through altered states of consciousness among academic schools and scientific researchers. In this article, the author analyzes the relation between science and religion proposing that the “demarcation problem” between the two arises from the relations among consciousness, intentionality, and spirituality. The analysis starts at the beginning of modern science, continues through the nineteenth century, and (...) then examines the appearance of new schools in psychology and anthropology in the countercultural milieu of the 1960s. The author analyzes the case of ayahuasca against this historical background, first, in the general context of ayahuasca studies in the academic field. Second, he briefly describes three cases from Spain. Finally, he discusses the permeability of science to “spiritual ontologies” from an interdisciplinary perspective, using insights from social and cognitive sciences. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 31, Issue 2, pp 127 - 146 The aim of this paper is to trace Thomas Hobbes’s arguments for the rejection of spiritual possession in _Leviathan_. Several layers of Hobbes’s thought converge in this subject: his suggestion regarding the sovereign’s right to control religious doctrine; his mechanistic critique of incorporeal substances; his tirade against demonology and Pagan philosophy; his ideas about fear and the natural seeds of religion; his Biblical criticism. Hobbes’s reflections over the matter of spiritual (...) possession allowed him to simultaneously attack institutionalized and charismatic supernatural experiences, rejecting on Biblical as well as philosophical grounds the possibility of demonic and divine possession. This assault on traditional pneumatology led him to new interpretations of the notions of spirit and immateriality, a core element in _Leviathan_’s resignification of the interaction between nature and supernature. The paper will address Hobbes’s call for a civil exorcism―political, exegetical, and philosophical―against the spiritual powers that possess the Commonwealth. (shrink)

In a famous passage drawing implications from determinism, Laplace introduced the image an intelligence who knew the positions and momenta of all of the particles of which the universe is composed, and asserted that in a deterministic universe such an intelligence would be able to predict everything that happens over its entire history. It is not, however, difficult to establish the physical possibility of a counterpredictive device, i.e., a device designed to act counter to any revealed prediction of its behavior. (...) What would happen if a Laplacean intelligence were put into communication with such a device and forced to reveal its prediction of what the device would do on some occasion? On the one hand, it seems that the Laplacean Intelligence should be able to predict the device's behavior. On the other hand, it seems like that device should be able to act counter to the prediction. An examination of the puzzle leads to clarification of what determinism does entail, with some insights about various other things along the way. (shrink)

This chapter addresses the worry that the existence of causal antecedents to your choices means that you are causally compelled to act as you do. It begins with the folk notion of cause, leads the reader through recent developments in the scientific understanding of causal concepts, and argues that those developments undermine the threat from causal antecedents. The discussion is then used as a model for a kind of naturalistic metaphysics that takes its lead from science, letting everyday concepts be (...) shaped and transformed by scientific developments. (shrink)

Since at least the 1970s, the countryside of Western Europe has been the site of a myriad of “new” communal initiatives. Rural areas that were abandoned during the last century have witnessed the arrival of new inhabitants. These newcomers often flock to the mountains escaping urban lifestyles characterized by individualism, mass-oriented livelihoods, and isolation. Many of these individuals move to areas like the Catalan Pyrenees, where common property and communal institutions have had a strong historical presence. In embracing rural life, (...) these new inhabitants are looking for a more integrated social life in which the commons are, on the one hand, a form of collective private property, and, on the other, represent a more egalitarian way of life in which contributing to the collective effort is not only an efficient way of dealing with particularly harsh ecological conditions, but also an ideological statement that defines the community as something different: an alternative to urban capitalism. Two definitions of the commons are colliding in these mountains; two longstanding lines of political thought are converging and establishing a dialogue that is not always easy: (1) traditional ideologies of land ownership that defined common property over the centuries, not based on economic equality, but on private property and locally shared responsibility on the economic base of the community; and (2) utopian anti-capitalism that views the commons as an alternative mode of social organization and ownership based on egalitarianism. (shrink)

The role of probability is one of the most contested issues in the interpretation of contemporary physics. In this paper, I’ll be reevaluating some widely held assumptions about where and how probabilities arise. Larry Sklar voices the conventional wisdom about probability in classical physics in a piece in the Stanford Online Encyclopedia of Philosophy, when he writes that “Statistical mechanics was the first foundational physical theory in which probabilistic concepts and probabilistic explanation played a fundamental role.” And the conventional wisdom (...) about quantum probabilities is that they are basic, not reducible to the types of probabilities we see in statistical mechanics. In the first section of this paper, I’ll argue that in fact classical physics was steeped in probability long before statistical mechanics came on the scene, specifically, that an objective measure over phase space is an indispensable component of any informative physical theory. In the next section, I’ll argue that this objective measure is the fundamental form of physical probability and that quantum probabilities can be defined in terms of it. In the last, I’ll raise some questions about the metaphysical status of the fundamental measure. (shrink)

Ayahuasca is a psychoactive substance from the Amazon rainforest regions of Peru, Colombia, Ecuador, and Brazil. Although its use originated among indigenous tribes in the Amazon basin, it has become increasingly popularized in Western society through the transnational markets of spirituality and religiosity driven by globalization, Postmodernity, and new forms of religious practice. In this paper, we will overview the arrival of ayahuasca in Uruguay by way of four different groups. We will then focus on one of these groups, a (...) holistic alternative therapies center, influenced by Peruvian shamanic traditions in the design of its ceremonies. Last we will introduce a “distributed cognition” model to explain ayahuasca rituals as a system of activity. (shrink)

The chance of a physical event is the objective, single-case probability that it will occur. In probabilistic physical theories like quantum mechanics, the chances of physical events play the formal role that the values of physical quantities play in classical physics, and there is a temptation to regard them on the model of the latter as describing intrinsic properties of the systems to which they are assigned. I argue that this understanding of chances in quantum mechanics, despite being a part (...) of the orthodox interpretation of the theory and the most prevalent view in the physical community, is incompatible with a very wide range of metaphysical views about the nature of chance. The options that remain are unlikely to be attractive to scientists and scientifically minded philosophers. (shrink)

The outstanding stumbling blocks to any reductive account of phenomenal consciousness remain the subjectivity of phenomenal properties and cognitive and epistemic gaps that plague the relationship between physical and phenomenal properties. I suggest that a deflationary interpretation of both is available to defenders of self- representational accounts.

En el siglo XX, la música popular fue el lenguaje artístico más contundente y una de las grandes fuerzas estéticas de Brasil. Desde los años 30, ella ocupó una posición importante en debates culturales y proyectos nacionalistas y, a lo largo de los años, expandió su alcance con el avance de los medios de comunicación. Dicha inversión todavía resultó, más allá de lo esperado, en la producción de una modalidad crítica de canción. Así que en los 60, Al igual que (...) el arte moderno, la canción se tornó reflexiva, operando de manera crítica en relación a sí misma y al contexto cultural y político. El componente reflexivo de la canción parece haber ampliado considerablemente su alcance cultural. Tanto es así que no parece irrazonable señalar una conexión profunda entre la canción y un cierto horizonte de construcción nacional. En este trabajo, intentamos hacer un panorama del desarrollo de la música popular brasileña de modo a aclarar ese proceso y, tal vez, posibilitar nuevos planteamientos para pensar sus posibilidades críticas desde su dimensión estética. (shrink)

Nuestra pretensión en este artículo es modesta: nos proponemos únicamente poner de relieve el doble sentido de los términos "idea" y "sensación" en la filosofía de los siglos XVII y XVIII. Como es sabido, ambos términos constituyen, respectivamente, el núcleo esencial del racionalismo y el empirismo. La idea para el primero y la sensación para el segundo se erigen ciertamente en piezas gnoseológicas clave sin las cuales ni uno ni otro podrían ser cabalmente comprendidos.

Este trabajo explora el potencial de las fuentes artísticas y de los museos que las albergan para desarrollar competencias propias del pensamiento histórico entre estudiantes de Educación Secundaria. Se revisa de qué modo y hasta qué punto la normativa curricular española atiende al trabajo con estos dos elementos para enseñar a pensar históricamente, y se presentan argumentos, derivados de la Didáctica de las Ciencias Sociales y otros campos afines, sobre los beneficios de incluir prácticamente las colecciones artísticas en la educación (...) histórica. Para ejemplificar una posible vía de trabajo con metaconceptos como el de cambio y continuidad, se diseña una propuesta didáctica contextualizada en el Museo Pablo Gargallo (Zaragoza, España) que tiene por objetivo analizar críticamente cómo el arte ha reflejado, construido o desafiado determinados cánones de belleza a lo largo de la historia. (shrink)