The hypothesis of a theoretical unity between On Sophistical Refutations and Prior Analytics presents a major challenge to scholars attempting to unify the criteria of analysis. This paper examines this problem and proposes a middle ground between the perspectives of Woods and Boger to address this crucial question: If a unitary and coherent theory of deduction exists, why does not the technical apparatus of syllogistic modes for analyzing fallacies appear in SE? This paper makes useful contributions to the discussion on (...) the internal unity of Aristotle's logical writings on around categorical syllogistics and the doctrine of sophistical refutations. (shrink)

The hypothesis of a theoretical unity between On Sophistical Refutations and Prior Analytics presents a major challenge to scholars attempting to unify the criteria of analysis. This paper examines this problem and proposes a middle ground between the perspectives of Woods and Boger to address this crucial question: If a unitary and coherent theory of deduction exists, why does not the technical apparatus of syllogistic modes for analyzing fallacies appear in SE? This paper makes useful contributions to the discussion on (...) the internal unity of Aristotle's logical writings on around categorical syllogistics and the doctrine of sophistical refutations. (shrink)

Context: The majority of contemporary enactivist work is influenced by the philosophical biology of Hans Jonas. Jonas credits all living organisms with experience that involves particular “existential” structures: nascent forms of concern for self-preservation and desire for objects and outcomes that promote well-being. We argue that Jonas’s attitude towards living systems involves a problematic anthropomorphism that threatens to place enactivism at odds with cognitive science, and undermine its legitimate aims to become a new paradigm for scientific investigation and understanding of (...) the mind. Problem: Enactivism needs to address the tension between its Jonasian influences and its aspirations to become a new paradigm for cognitive science. By relying on Jonasian phenomenology, contemporary enactivism obscures alternative ways in which phenomenology can be more smoothly integrated with cognitive science. Method: We outline the historical relationship between enactivism and phenomenology, and explain why anthropomorphism is problematic for a research program that aspires to become a new paradigm for cognitive science. We examine the roots of Jonas’s existential interpretation of biological facts, and describe how and why Jonas himself understood his project as founded on an anthropomorphic assumption that is incompatible with a crucial methodological assumption of scientific enquiry: the prohibition of unexplained natural purposes. We describe the way in which phenomenology can be integrated into Maturana’s autopoietic theory, and use this as an example of how an alternative, non-anthropomorphic science of the biological roots of cognition might proceed. Results: Our analysis reveals a crucial tension between Jonas’s influence on enactivism and enactivism’s paradigmatic aspirations. This suggests the possibility of, and need to investigate, other ways of integrating phenomenology with cognitive science that do not succumb to this tension. Implications: In light of this, enactivists should either eliminate the Jonasian inference from properties of our human experience to properties of the experience of all living organisms, or articulate an alternative conception of scientific enquiry that can tolerate the anthropomorphism this inference entails. The Maturanian view we present in the article’s final section constitutes a possible framework within which enactivist tools and concepts can be used to understand cognition and phenomenology, and that does not involve a problematic anthropomorphism. Constructivist content: Any constructivist approach that aims for integration with current scientific practice must either avoid the type of anthropomorphic inference on which Jonas bases his work, or specify a new conception of scientific enquiry that renders anthropomorphism unproblematic. (shrink)

Building on the original formulation of the autopoietic theory (AT), extended enactivism argues that living beings are autopoietic systems that extend beyond the spatial boundaries of the organism. In this article, we argue that extended enactivism, despite having some basis in AT’s original formulation, mistakes AT’s definition of living beings as autopoietic entities. We offer, as a reply to this interpretation, a more embodied reformulation of autopoiesis, which we think is necessary to counterbalance the (excessively) disembodied spirit of AT’s original (...) formulation. The article aims to clarify and correct what we take to be a misinterpretation of AT as a research program. AT, contrary to what some enactivists seem to believe, did not (and does not) intend to motivate an extended conception of living beings. AT’s primary purpose, we argue, was (and is) to provide a universal individuation criterion for living beings, these understood as discrete bodies that are embedded in, but not constituted by, the environment that surrounds them. However, by giving a more explicitly embodied definition of living beings, AT can rectify and accommodate, so we argue, the enactive extended interpretation of autopoiesis, showing that although living beings do not extend beyond their boundaries as autopoietic unities, they do form part, in normal conditions, of broader autopoietic systems that include the environment. (shrink)

This paper examines a fundamental philosophical difference between two radical postcognitivist theories that are usually assumed to offer the same view of cognition; namely the autopoietic theory and the enactive approach. The ways these two theories understand cognition, it is argued, are not compatible nor incompatible but rather incommensurable. The reason, so it is argued, is that while enactivism, following the traditional stance held by most of the cognitive theories, understands cognitive systems as constituting a natural kind, the autopoietic theory (...) understands them as constituting only a conventional kind. Additionally, the paper shows that AT’s conventionalist stance about cognition, far from being an undesirable or useless position, offers some methodological virtues that might be timely and welcome in the agitated and revolutionary climate of current cognitive science. (shrink)

Research traditions on cognition and depression focus on relatively unconnected aspects of cognitive functioning. On one hand, the neuropsychological perspective has concentrated on cognitive control difficulties as a prominent feature of this condition. On the other hand, the clinical psychology perspective has focused on cognitive biases and repetitive negative patterns of thinking for emotional information. A review of the literature from both fields reveals that difficulties are more evident for mood-congruent materials, suggesting that cognitive control difficulties interact with cognitive biases (...) to hinder cognitive switching, working memory updating, and inhibition of irrelevant information. Connecting research from these two traditions, we propose a novel integrative cognitive model of depression in which the interplay between mood-congruent cognitive control difficulties, cognitive biases, and rumination may ultimately lead to ineffective emotion-regulation strategies to downregulate negative mood and upregulate positive mood. (shrink)

The autopoietic theory and the enactive approach are two theoretical streams that, in spite of their historical link and conceptual affinities, offer very different views on the nature of living beings. In this paper, we compare these views and evaluate, in an exploratory way, their respective degrees of internal coherence. Focusing the analyses on certain key notions such as autonomy and organizational closure, we argue that while the autopoietic theory manages to elaborate an internally consistent conception of living beings, the (...) enactive approach presents an internal tension regarding its characterization of living beings as intentional systems directed at the environment. (shrink)

The study explores communication strategies of ethno-nationalist terrorists with respect to their framing and identity building. Strategies of eight ethno-nationalist terrorist groups were analyzed using 70 articles published on the groups’ websites. Three cluster-analytic procedures and a correlational analysis were applied to strategies of problem definition, cause and responsibility attribution, treatment recommendations, and identity building. The analysis revealed various dimensions on which terrorists frame their content. No group-specific strategies of framing and identity building have been found yet, suggesting that the (...) strategies were universal across terrorist groups, and they were applied on a case-by-case basis. Knowledge about these strategies should advance counter-terrorism efforts, and assist in development of alternative identities among ethnic groups at risk of conflict. (shrink)

In this paper we will demonstrate that a computational system can meet the criteria for autonomy laid down by classical enactivism. The two criteria that we will focus on are operational closure and structural determinism, and we will show that both can be applied to a basic example of a physically instantiated Turing machine. We will also address the question of precariousness, and briefly suggest that a precarious Turing machine could be designed. Our aim in this paper is to challenge (...) the assumption that computational systems are necessarily heteronomous systems, to try and motivate in enactivism a more nuanced and less rigid conception of computational systems, and to demonstrate to computational theorists that they might find some interesting material within the enactivist tradition, despite its historical hostility towards computationalism. (shrink)

Se analizan los desafíos de futuro de la sociedad digital. Desde perspectiva fenomenológico-hermenéutica, la idea de una ética de la tecnología considera la sociedad digital como dispositivo técnico. La literatura pertinente permite, primero, estudiar la tecnología disruptiva como generadora de cambios sociales, los cuales, a su vez, transforman las formas de la facticidad de la vida. De esta manera, la ética de la sociedad material, sirve de argumento para analizar la ética en la sociedad digital. Tomando la bioética filosófica como (...) instrumento, se concluye que la sociedad digital antepone retos para la vida, los cuales debe afrontar para la supervivencia. (shrink)

In the context of the recent publication of Donner le tempts II, we question the status of the gift, its singularity, its relationship, beyond the intentional structure of decision and consciousness, with the general problematic of democracy and the archive, of Khora as an enigma that haunts the same Onto-Theo-Cosmological conjugation of metaphysics and logocentrism, to show that the question about the gift is also the question about history and about the very possibility of democracy, beyond the capitalist logic of (...) accumulation and valuation. We end up referring to the strange case of the ‘six pesos’ thematized in Miguel Angel Asturias's novel, Hombres de maiz, as a case of the incalculable. Far from an instrumental account, but also from a providential version of the gift, we try to show it as an event always already inscribed in the abyss of our exchange relations, a possibility contained in its own impossibility. (shrink)

The river Portoviejo crosses four cantons of the province of Manabí and is the main source of water for the inhabitants of the area to be used in various uses. The objective of this bibliographic review article is to carry out a historical analysis of the water pollution of the Portoviejo River. The qualitative and descriptive documentary research methodology was used. The authors conclude that the factors that influence the pollution of the Portoviejo River are the constant direct discharges of (...) wastewater and solid waste along its route by the residents of the area and the contribution of the water treatment plant waste from the area. (shrink)

Resumen A partir de una de las últimas novelas de la escritora brasileña, Clarice Lispector, A hora da estrela (1977), y de la problematización de la relación entre literatura, representación y pobreza, este trabajo intenta dos cosas: (1) mostrar el complejo mecanismo utilizado por Lispector en la elaboración de su novela, como un trabajo de des-narrativización que interrumpe el proceso representacional desde una elaboración minimalista de la trama y del personaje; y (2) mostrar cómo, a partir de dicha presentación de (...) la vida precaria de su protagonista, Macabea, también refe-rida como la nordestina, se hace posible una nueva relación entre literatura, crítica e historia. (shrink)

Traditionally, computational theory (CT) and dynamical systems theory (DST) have presented themselves as opposed and incompatible paradigms in cognitive science. There have been some efforts to reconcile these paradigms, mainly, by assimilating DST to CT at the expenses of its anti-representationalist commitments. In this paper, building on Piccinini’s mechanistic account of computation and the notion of functional closure, we explore an alternative conciliatory strategy. We try to assimilate CT to DST by dropping its representationalist commitments, and by inviting CT to (...) recognize the functionally closed nature of some computational systems. (shrink)

Es preciso penetrar en los motivos que impulsan a Donoso a su interpretación del pensamiento viquiano, comprender su perspectiva filosófica que le hace recibir a Vico como el fundador de la Filosofía de la Historia. El interés básico se halla en el objeto de esa "filosofía de la historia" que con Vico toma consistencia científica: ciencia del mundo humano. Pero aún más, Vico ofrece a Donoso el método de la filosofía de la historia. Sin embargo, hay que preguntarse por qué (...) el Donoso "maduro" se separa del Vico abrazado por el "joven" Donoso; y con ello se entenderá mejor no sólo el desarrollo del pensamiento histórico donosiano sino también la recepción de Vico en España.It is necessary to find out the causes that impel Donoso to his interpretation to the thought of Vico, to understand his philosophical perspective that makes him consider Vico as the founder of the Philosophy of History. The basic interest lies in the aim of that "philosophy of History" that thanks to Vico receives scientific consistency: science of the human world. But even more, Vico offers Donoso the method of the philosophy of History. Nevertheless, one has to wonder why the "mature" Donoso separates from the Vico embraced by the "young" Donoso and having achieved this, one will fully understand not only the development of the historical thought of Donoso but also Vico's reception in Spain. (shrink)

This paper presents an interpretation of the ontology developed by Deleuze in Différence et répétition under a topological perspective. It maintains that the Deleuzian thesis concerning Being as univocal and differential is supported by a theory of expression which holds a conception of space that goes beyond the Euclidian viewpoint. I will approach this spatial dynamism from a series of mathematical notions that assist the production of Deleuze’s main ontological concepts, defining the expression and its moments by the interaction between (...) different types of multiplicities, made of heterogeneous folds. (shrink)

La filosofía de María Zambrano como superación del racionalismo nos plantea una perspectiva desde la que advertir nuevas extensiones del pensamiento viquiano. Este texto, aunque no analiza tales conexiones y puntos comunes, nos dibuja un paralelo emergente desde la conciencia de crisis en nuestra propia época. La crisis del racionalismo y su superación, la razón poética, la verdad de cada época, el valor de la palabra, etc., marcan en el horizonte la línea de una Aurora de la razón que, sin (...) necesidad de ser mostrada expresamente, alumbra emparentada con la misma luz que emerge con Vico, "un pensador auroral". Cualquier estudioso de Vico encontrará en las ideas de Zambrano, que en este texto se tratan, un perfil de afinidad en el que ambos pensadores "tientan una nueva época".Maria Zambrano’s philosophy, understood as a overcoming of Rationalism, provides us with a new perspective from which light can be shed upon new extensions of the Vichian Thought. This text, though it does not analyze such a connections and common points, draws an emerging parallelism from our own age consciousness of crisis. The crisis of Rationalism and its own superation, the poetical Reason, each age’s own reason, the worth of the wordings, etc., draw upon the horizon the lines of the Reason’s Dawning which, without being necessarily shown, gives birth –related with same light of that of Vico– to a "Downing thought". Any Vichian scholar will be able to find in Zambrano’s ideas, with which this paper is concerned, a profile of certain resemblance in which both thinkers "attempt to a new age". (shrink)

In this study, we propose considering membership in the Ethics Officer Association (EOA) as a proxy for the firm''s commitment to ethical decision making, and we analyze the influence of firm- and CEO-specific characteristics on this commitment. While we observe a positive relationship between membership and firm size, we also document a negative relationship between EOA membership and the executive''s time in position and, to a more modest extent, accounting returns. Pursuing this further, we present evidence that firms with past (...) legal issues may seek EOA membership as a signal of their intention to be compliant in the future. (shrink)

In this article, we aim at presenting a thorough and comprehensive explanation of the mathematical and theoretical relation between all the aspects of Ptolemaic planetary models and their counterparts which are built according to Kepler’s first two laws. Our article also analyzes the predictive differences which arise from comparing Ptolemaic and these ideal Keplerian models, making clear distinctions between those differences which must be attributed to the structural variations between the models, and those which are due to the specific parameters (...) Ptolemy determined in the Almagest. We expect that our work will be a contribution for a better understanding not only of the Ptolemaic theories for planetary longitudes through a clearer perception of the way in which Keplerian features are present—or absent—in Ptolemy’s models, but also for a more balanced judgement of different aspects of the contribution of the first two laws of Kepler to the modern astronomical revolution. (shrink)

Este trabajo plantea un ejercicio de ontología de la música y propone una indagación filosófica more radicale de ésta. Se recorre el camino hacia la poíesis musical a través de tres apartados, buscándose lograr una filosofía que sea capaz de explicar y comprender la música en el contexto ontológico, y no meramente desde el punto de vista estético.This piece poses an exercise of onthology of music and proposes a philosophical inquiry of it more radicale . The path to musical poíesis (...) is reached through three stages, trying to achieve a philosophy that is capable of explaining and comprehending the music in an onthological context, and not merely from an aesthetic point of view. (shrink)

The publication of scientific papers has become increasingly problematic in the last decades. Even if we agree that a renewed model is needed for peer-reviewed scientific publication, we think the problem does not essentially lie in professional publishing—with economic incentives—but in the publish-or-perish culture that dominates the lives of researchers and academics.

The Author describes briefly how, through the confluence of trie new medical specialties of Reproductive Medicine and Molecular Genetics, a wide avenue has been opened to the genetic diagnosis and therapy of the preimplantation embryo. Today, the human embryo in its early stages has become the object of medical experimentation. In the next future, we will see the advent of new techniques for microsurgical manipulation and gene therapy Embryo-fetal Medicine will grow actively. The Author, after briefly analyzing the origin, and (...) criticizing the meaning, of the term preembryo, condueles, on the basis of unbiased observation of the continuum of human life, that only an attitude of respect for life and the determination to extend to the early human embryo the benefits of (gene)therapy are consistent with the deepest medical-deontological traditions. (shrink)

Published in 1998, the main aim of this book is to use a naturalistic, evolutionary approach to solve some of the most important problems in philosophy. The first two problems come from the philosophy of science: the problem of rationality of science and the problem of truth in science. In presenting the first problem, the author argues that the views of Kuhn and Feyerabend do create a very serious challenge to traditional epistemology, however, if the assumption of individual rationality is (...) abandoned in favour of the author's social concept of rationality, a committed naturalism can account for science as a rational activity. In tackling the second problem of truth, the author shows that a committed evolutionary philosophy does not support realism but leads instead to a thorough evolutionary relativism of scientific knowledge. It is nevertheless possible to use this evolutionary relativism to construct a theory of relative truth. The issue of whether science discovers truth has also been tied to absolutism, that a well formulated theory of relative truth is likely to bring about a profound transformation of the way we think about the field. The author explores the notion of relative truth in the philosophy of science, ethics and aesthetics. (shrink)

This paper suggests that the enactive approach to ethics could benefit from engaging a dialogue with the phenomenology of Emmanuel Levinas, a philosopher who has given ethics a decisive role in the understanding of our social life. Taking the enactive approach of Colombetti and Torrance as a starting point, we show how Levinas’ philosophy, with the key notions of face, otherness, and responsibility among others can complement and enrich the enactive view of ethics. Specifically, we argue that Levinas can provide, (...) on the one hand, a phenomenological characterisation of ethics itself, of its nature and fundamental meaning, and on the other, an account of how sociality, affectivity and embodiment, as presented in Colombetti and Torrance’s work, combine to bring about the ethical experience. However, we also point out that introducing Levinas to the enactive approach could be challenging. It is not obvious how sense-making and value-making, as centred on the precariousness and potential death of the subject, would account for the ethical experience as grounded on the precariousness and potential death of the other. (shrink)

ABSTRACT For Victoria Kahn, Hobbes' argument that fear of violent death is “the passion to be reckoned upon” in explaining what inclines men to peace must be interpreted as a mimetic argument. However, Kahn then notes a paradox that makes Hobbes' thinking problematic: whereas love and the desires are appetites that produce an imitative effect, fear is different. Though also a passion, fear lacks that capacity to produce a mimetic effect or, therefore, to generate a contract. My hypothesis is that (...) resolving the dilemma presented in Kahn's interpretation of Hobbes requires a shift in attention from mimesis to rhetoric and, more specifically, to biological rhetoric as defined by Nancy Struever. This approach to Hobbes makes it possible to understand the rhetorical role of fear in generating and maintaining the social contract, and how the problem that Kahn signals—the impotence of fear in relation to mimesis—can be resolved. (shrink)

In contrast to Capra’s interpretation of Maturana’s work, I argue that the autopoietic theory does not establish an intrinsic, necessary link between life and cognitive/mental phenomena, and that given its functionalist approach, the theory helps very little to overcome the Cartesian division between mind and body.

Recently, Michael Wheeler has argued that despite its sometimes revolutionary rhetoric, the so called 4E cognitive movement, even in the guise of ‘radical’ enactivism, cannot achieve a full revolution in cognitive science. A full revolution would require the rejection of two essential tenets of traditional cognitive science, namely internalism and representationalism. Whilst REC might secure antirepresentationalism, it cannot do the same, so Wheeler argues, with externalism. In this paper, expanding on Wheeler’s analysis, we argue that what compromises REC’s externalism is (...) the persistence of cognitively relevant asymmetries between its purported cognitive systems and the environment. Complementarily, we argue that an antirepresentationalist ancestor of enactivism, the autopoietic theory of cognition, is able to deliver and secure externalism, thus offering the explosive combination that Wheeler claims us needed for a revolution in cognitive science. (shrink)

La emergencia del nuevo cine argentino desata una serie de debates teóricos. Probablemente una de las caracterizaciones más convincentes es la que lo define como surgido de una misma crisis, no sólo en el campo cinematográfico, sino también de una misma crisis social. En el marco de un análisis sociológico de este fenómeno cultural, el presente trabajo planteará una hipótesis de lectura para algunas de las producciones audiovisuales del denominado nuevo cine argentino, en pos de establecer conceptualmente la estructuración desde (...) el polo productivo de la elaboración imaginaria de esta crisis social, concretamente, de la emergencia de las clases populares en sus filmes. Para finalizar, se evaluará la productividad de la hipótesis de lectura basada en una definición teórica de lo popular, aplicándola a un cuerpo de filmes del realizador argentino Adrián Caetano, para concluir con reflexiones sobre la importancia del cruce entre la estructuración textual y la estructuración en el momento del consumo. (shrink)

Todo el curso gravita sobre la función reproductiva de la trompa. La trompa, en fin de cuentas, es un oviducto. Ya bastante habrán dicho de todo ello Michel Idoate y Fernando de la Fuente. Yo lo que quiero hacer en mi charla es llamar la atención sobre los aspectos éticos de unos pocos hechos básicos: que, de ordinario, la fecundación tiene lugar en la ampolla tubárica y que aquí y en el istmo transcurren las primeras horas y los primeros días (...) del desarrollo embrionario. Estos hechos, tan conocidos, tienen implicaciones ético-médicas muy importantes. La principal de ellas, se refiere a quien sea el embrión humano que se engendra en la trompa y en ella habita cuatro o cinco días. Pero, no menos importante, es la que se refiere a cuáles son las relaciones éticas que han de establecerse entre el médico y la mujer en cuya trompa flota un embrión. (shrink)

Durante las últimas décadas, ha resurgido la polémica sobre la existencia de la “Filosofía en México”. Además del universalismo y el particularismo, hay una cuestión que aparece reiteradamente en esta polémica: la de la la distinción entre “Filosofía en México” y “Filosofía Mexicana”. Sin embargo, no todos la significan de la misma manera. Así, para Aureliano Ortega, ha existido una “Filosofía Mexicana” en términos de una filosofía dispersa; para Mauricio Beuchot, ha habido y puede seguir habiendo una “Filosofía Mexicana”, en (...) el sentido de un Universalismo analógico (en el esfuerzo de replantear el universalismo concreto de Hegel); Guillermo Hurtado, por su parte, propone hablar de una meta filosofía práctica, para abordar la cuestión; y, por último, Carlos Pereda sugiere que, para hablar de “Filosofía Mexicana”, en buenos términos, es necesario cambiar un vicio, el del entusiasmo nacionalista, por una virtud, el del nacionalismo responsable. (shrink)

Some philosophers think that Paul Feyerabend is a clown, a great many others think that he is one of the most exciting philosophers of science of this century. For me the truth does not lie somewhere in between, for I am decidedly of the second opinion, an opinion that is becoming general around the world as this century comes to an end and history begins to cast its appraising eye upon the intellectual harvest of our era. A good example of (...) this opinion may be found in the admiration for Feyerabend's philosophy of science expressed by Grover Maxwell in his contribution to this volume. Maxwell, recalling his own intellectual transformation, says also that it was Feyerabend who "confirmed my then incipient suspicions that most of the foundations of currently fashionable philosophy and even a great deal of the methodology to which many scientists pay enthusiastic lip service are based on simple mistake- assumptions whose absurdity becomes obvious once attention is directed at them". And lest the reader thinks, as many still do, that however sharp Feyerabend's attacks upon the philosophical establishment may have been, he does not offer a positive philosophy (a complain made by C.A. Hooker and some of the other contributors), Paul Churchland argues otherwise. (shrink)

In Spain, free gender self-determination has been recognized with the promulgation of Law 4/2023, of February 28. The objective of this text is to analyse what reasons have motivated this regulation and how well founded they are. Should we recognize gender self-determination? We conclude negatively, but for reasons other than those usually cited. To reach this conclusion, we review the legal and jurisprudential evolution of the matter (section 1), and analyse the main arguments offered in favour (section 2) and against (...) (section 3) of this possibility. Finally, we suggest that the best option would be to include the mention of sex in its traditional conception and allow those who wish to also include their gender or gender identity. (shrink)

This article analyzes the legal-philosophical situation of Artificial Intelligence and the intelligent robot on being a subject of Law to be considered a creative person or author. The contradiction involved in allowing an object to present the legal duality of being protected as an object that it is and at the same time being considered a subject by the resulting work is analyzed, an impairment or vulgarization for the subject of Law as a moral subject when proposing the fictio legis (...) de a moral object, which is not conceivable. Instead, an alternative to such an aporia is proposed, more fictitious than real. (shrink)