How do we come to like the things that we do? Each one of us starts from a relatively similar state at birth, yet we end up with vastly different sets of aesthetic preferences. These preferences go on to define us both as individuals and as members of our cultures. Therefore, it is important to understand how aesthetic preferences form over our lifetimes. This poses a challenging problem: to understand this process, one must account for the many factors at play (...) in the formation of aesthetic values and how these factors influence each other over time. A general framework based on basic neuroscientific principles that can also account for this process is needed. Here, we present such a framework and illustrate it through a model that accounts for the trajectories of aesthetic values over time. Our framework is inspired by meta-analytic data of neuroimaging studies of aesthetic appraisal. This framework incorporates effects of sensory inputs, rewards, and motivational states. Crucially, each one of these effects is probabilistic. We model their interactions under a reinforcement-learning circuitry. Simulations of this model and mathematical analysis of the framework lead to three main findings. First, different people may develop distinct weighing of aesthetic variables because of individual variability in motivation. Second, individuals from different cultures and environments may develop different aesthetic values because of unique sensory inputs and social rewards. Third, because learning is stochastic stemming from probabilistic sensory inputs, motivations, and rewards, aesthetic values vary in time. These three theoretical findings account for different lines of empirical research. Through our study, we hope to provide a general and unifying framework for understanding the various aspects involved in the formation of aesthetic values over time. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Schopenhauer on the Inevitability of Suffering Criticisms of Schopenhauer's Thesis that to Desire Is to Suffer The Unattainability of True Satisfaction The Inevitability of Boredom The Negative Nature of Pleasure and Satisfaction Happiness and Well‐Being Degrees of Unhappiness: The Possibility of Amelioration The Paradox of the Suspension or Negation of the Will The Inevitability of Unhappiness References Further Reading.

El propósito de este trabajo es indagar la crítica foucaultiana del neoliberalismo desarrollada en las conferencias que Michel Foucault dictó en el Collège de France en 1979. En dicho curso, el filósofo francés propuso un abordaje crítico de la economía política al que denominó crítica política del saber. Por lo tanto, el foco de este artículo es la crítica política del saber económico que despliega en el curso mencionado. Investigación arqueo-genealógica en la que el neoliberalismo no es estudiado ni como (...) una ideología ni como una teoría económica, sino como una racionalidad gubernamental. (shrink)

Resumo Este artigo apresenta um referencial pragmatista para compreender o estatuto epistêmico da valoração que é produzida na reflexão acerca das consequências sociais de propostas científicas e tecnológicas. O problema é posto, seguindo-se as considerações de Bertrand Russell sobre o impacto da ciência na sociedade. Russell argumenta que a valoração de arranjos sociais fica fora dos limites do conhecimento, porque valorações não podem ser verdadeiras ou falsas, em sentido correspondencial. Isso leva o pensamento social a um impasse, pois não se (...) pode saber que dado arranjo social seria indesejável ou inadequado. Este texto esboça uma alternativa, a partir dos trabalhos sobre valoração de Clarence Irving Lewis, tomados em continuidade com a teoria da investigação de John Dewey. Esse referencial alternativo assume noções epistêmicas de verdade e justificação, o que permite que valorações possam ser concebidas em contextos de investigação e, assim, como objetos de conhecimento.This article presents a pragmatist framework to understand the epistemic status of valuations produced upon reflection on social consequences of scientific and technological proposals. The problem is set following Bertrand Russell’s considerations on the impact of science on society. Russell argues that valuating social arrangements falls beyond the limits of knowledge, because valuations cannot be true or false in the sense of correspondence. This leads social thought to a deadlock, since one cannot know that a given social arrangement would be undesirable or inadequate. This article sketches an alternative from Clarence Irving Lewis’s works on valuation taken in continuity with John Dewey’s theory of inquiry. This alternative framework assumes epistemic notions of truth and justification, allowing that valuations can be construed in contexts of inquiry and thus as objects of knowledge. (shrink)

The main result proved in the paper is that on every recursive structure the intrinsically hyperarithmetical sets coincide with the relatively intrinsically hyperarithmetical sets. As a side effect of the proof an effective version of the Kueker's theorem on definability by means of infinitary formulas is obtained.

While agreeing with Bernard Reginster that Nietzsche's advocacy of the will to power as a psychological thesis is much more fundamental than his extension of it as a cosmological or metaphysical thesis, I criticize him for failing to support this interpretation, and I attempt to supply an analysis that does support it. Then, I take issue with the common tendency to sanitize Nietzsche's theory of the will to power, to make it more palatable—and with Reginster's treatment of this issue. This (...) leads me to an examination of Nietzsche's conception of power—and a critique of Reginster's account of it. (shrink)

The relation between philosophy and theology in Martin Heidegger’s thought is multilayered and tense. On the one hand, he admits that his theological origin, i.e. his Christian-Catholic rootedness, determines the direction of his thought, while on the other hand, he has been fighting against theology that is too much tinted with philosophy. At the same time, he opposes that his thought be called theistic or atheistic. In the analytic of Dasein he wants to create assumptions that would enable him to (...) talk about God, gods or divine in general. This brings him close to mysticism, and even more so to mythology, which is revealed in his interpretation of Hölderlin. Nietzsche’s talk about God’s death helps him in this context. However, neither with Nietzsche nor with Heidegger does this death look like real death. Both thinkers hold that death strikes that God who has in philosophy and theology been made a being. After the thinking of the Being had thrown light upon their thought, God of Biblical theology and above all God whose coming is expected according to Heidegger cannot be left to death, because he evades human comprehension, especially one in the form of philosophy and theology. (shrink)

Three partners founded the Grenada Chocolate Company in 1999: Mott Green, Doug Browne and Edmond Brown. Several years ago Doug passed away of cancer and in June 2013 Mott suffered a fatal electrocution while repairing a piece of equipment. Edmond was now thrust into the leadership position and left to decide what direction GCC should take. The GCC product line was becoming increasingly popular both on the island and internationally and demand was high,but the original vision for the company was (...) to produce bean-to-bar chocolates while providing a fair wage to the local employees and farmers. Expansion could be an option for Edmond and GCC, but was it possible to expand and stay true to the ideas on which GCC was founded? (shrink)

Este artículo se ubica en el ámbito de la formación jurídica y expone tres macro estrategias del aprendizaje, que bien pueden, como aquí se afirma, interactuar y complementarse entre sí. En primer lugar, se representa el modelo educativo centrado en la transmisión de conceptos, sin duda el más arraigado y tradicional en el contexto europeo-continental. En segundo lugar, se procede examinando el paradigma formativo por problemas, enfocado en el desarrollo de la capacidad analítica. En tercer lugar, se ilustra el método (...) educativo que entrena el discernimiento, impulsando la capacidad de elección, entre una multitud de opciones posibles, y empoderando la toma de decisiones racionalmente motivadas. En conclusión, se presenta una teoría formativa unitaria que pone en valor la relación funcional, potencialmente existente, entre estas diferentes metodologías formativas. (shrink)

An external characterization of the inductive sets on countable abstract structures is presented. The main result is an abstract version of the classical Suslin-Kleene characterization of the hyperarithmetical sets.

Este texto recoge parte de las reflexiones y del desarrollo del capítulo 5 del libro La barbarie que no vimos: Fotografía y memoria en Colombia. Aquí algunas preguntas que se intentan responder en este ensayo: ¿son las tecnologías las únicas responsables de la imposibilidad de ejercer una contemplación activa frente al infortunio de los demás? A propósito de la Parábola del Buen Samaritano, ¿este habría sido reemplazado por el espectador distante o implicado? ¿Qué sucede cuando ese espectador, de tanto ver (...) naufragios, termina fatigado? ¿Y de tanta fatiga, se vuelve indiferente? ¿Qué significa ser espectadores de naufragios en una época en la que la catástrofe no es ocasionada exclusivamente por fuerzas naturales sino por los propios seres humanos? ¿Es posible hallar hoy alguna orilla segura para reconocernos distanciados y salvados de las catástrofes ajenas? (shrink)

As result of the ongoing doctoral research, this paper composes the Communication delivered at the First National Post-Graduate Meeting in Philosophy of the University of Brasilia. The thesis relates to the real political action arising from liberty and immanent power. Structured in two moments of the Gramscian thought, that is: a) the juvenile phase (1914-1919), correspondent to the initial period of political engagement towards adherence to the Turin labor movement; and b) the analysis of the 48th § of Volume 3 (...) Prison Notebooks (Q 3, 48, 197) about the real political action. The whole problematic of the research relies in the investigation about Gramscian philosophical demands of the real political action that distinguishes it from the utopian idealism. In this sense, which are Gramscian´s contributions towards the Philosophy of praxis? The research indicates that the praxis requires a critical consciousness – passed through intellectual action in the formation of the people –, since the historical conditions are already given. (shrink)

This article carries out a critical analysis of the discourse/practice of Business Ethics that has developed to an unprecedented extent in the last decade or so. It argues that in the late-modern global political economy (GPE) there develops a form of a Gramscian hegemony of transnational capital and the discourse/practice of Business Ethics can be seen as a form of moral leadership in the context of the emerging hegemonic order.

Applying Heideggerian tool ontology to antiblack racism in the United States, Ontological Branding argues that race is a tool to constrain nonwhite persons, especially Black persons, to ways of being in service to the white world. U.S. law’s colorblind “equality” safeguards white supremacy, and racial justice instead requires ontological equality.

We analyse the reception of Niklas Luhmanns social metatheory in Slovenian social. The first part outlines the intellectual climate that prevailed in the decade before the post-socialist transition. The decline of the previously dominant Marxist ideology created space for other social theories. Luhmanns ideas were the most prominent among social macro theories in the initial phase. The second part describes variations in the reception of his ideas. The initial affirmative approach was upgraded by a number of more selective and critical (...) approaches. The third part shows that, although his ideas are no longer quite so prominent, his work is both well recognized and firmly embedded in Slovenian social thought. (shrink)

Mi comentario se divide en tres partes que obedecen, sin método ni exhaustividad, a las tres facetas que más me han interesado de Dworkin y que esta biografía me permitió revisitar: su faceta de intelectual público, su liberalismo ético o perfeccionista y un breve colofón sobre su generosidad académica.

This study aims to apply self-congruity theory to examine the relationship between self-congruity of tourists and their perceived image of a gambling destination. This study employs the Euclidean distance model and extends Malhotra's pars of adjectives with five new items about gambling motives. A face-to-face questionnaire survey was used, and a total of 152 samples were collected from tourists in Macau. The results show that the actual self-image of tourists is more related to their perception of Macau image. For actual (...) congruence, tourists exhibit a greater tendency to match the informal, liberal, and emotional image of Macau. For ideal congruence, they have a tendency to match the contemporary, organized, and pleasant image of Macau. This study makes up for the deficiency of self-congruity theory in tourism research. This study helps tourism departments to develop appropriate strategies to promote gambling tourism and disseminate relevant information that can bring gambling destinations closer to tourists. (shrink)

El presente ensayo no pretende hacer una investigación de las razones por la cualesHeidegger no escribió un tratado ético como tal, mucho menos, una apología acerca desu silencio, intencional o no, respecto a dicho asunto. Tampoco se pretende escribir unaética “de” Heidegger, sino más bien, encontrar las señales que “dejan-ver” la dimensiónética de su pensar y desde allí, llevar nuestro pensar por el camino que nos conduce a laposibilidad de rehabitar la tierra.

The aim of this study was to find out what interpretive repertoires young people use in the symbolic management of the pandemic. Qualitative research using several methods on a sample of 172 young people in three countries, Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Austria, and the subsequent discursive analysis showed that young people symbolically coped during the Covid-19 pandemic with the help of widespread concepts such as cutting off, closing sci-fi and panic. The interpretations used by young people to symbolically deal (...) with the pandemic are close to those present in the public discourse—the discourses of threat, loss, emotion—but there was also a search for the concepts and language for use by experts and the general public in communicating about the pandemic. There were no significant differences in the interpretations of life during the Covid-19 pandemic in the three Central European countries. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Neurath’s scientific utopianism is the proposal that the social sciences should engage in the elaboration, development, and comparison of counterfactual scenarios, the ‘utopias’. Such scenarios can be understood as centerpieces of scientific thought experiments, that is, in exercises of imagination that not only promote conceptual revision, but also stimulate creativity to deal with experienced problems, as utopias are efforts to imagine what the future could look like. Moreover, utopian thought experiments can offer scientific knowledge to inform political debates and (...) decisions, contributing to the shaping of society. This essay reconstructs a historical event as an example of Neurath’s utopianist methodology. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, a scientific and political commission appointed by the Western German Parliament devised and compared four scenarios for future energetic-economic policies. Conclusions of the commission informed political decisions that put Western (later reunified) Germany in a route towards becoming a green industrial power. A fundamental part of the commission’s work involved an appeal to imagination, allowing for the characterization under Neurath’s methodology. (shrink)

Este trabajo se centra en la creciente interacción entre la neurociencia y el derecho, delineando cuestiones de responsabilidad penal y en el marco más amplio de las interacciones epistemológicas entre diferentes campos del conocimiento. Ilustra la oportunidad de mantener un “debate” o diálogo peculiar entre las ramas de la ciencia consideradas y en el ámbito particular del neuroderecho. A continuación, el artículo presenta el método socrático como un enfoque dialéctico específico para orientar racionalmente estas conexiones epistemológicas, favorecer la comparación crítica (...) de perspectivas heterogéneas y, por tanto, poner de manifiesto espacios comunes fértiles en los que es posible alcanzar nuevos conocimientos interdisciplinarios. Por último, el artículo considera posturas significativas en el debate sobre el neuroderecho para mostrar que, en la medida en que se basan en la dialéctica y la refutación, pueden considerarse como fuertes manifestaciones de un diálogo socrático. Por lo tanto, aprovechando esta práctica, incluso en los sistemasjurídicos hay espacio para las pruebas y las aportaciones neurocientíficas, aunque esto conlleve una pizca de “neuromodestia”, pensamiento crítico y una defensa del método socrático. (shrink)

A lo largo del presente artículo se pretende analizar la problematización foucaulteana de las ciencias humanas elaborada en el contexto de sus trabajos sobre biopolítica y gubernamentalidad. En ese sentido, la biopolítica y la gubernamentalidad en cuanto tales no constituyen el objeto de nuestra indagación, sino que más bien es a través del abordaje foucaulteano de dichas problemáticas que buscaremos revisar su lectura respecto de los saberes acerca de “lo humano”.

This article examines the contributions made towards eugenic thought in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by Havelock Ellis . Ellis was a significant social reformer who worked on the problems of sexuality from a scientific–naturalist secular perspective. In the later phases of his work, after he had completed much of his writing on sexuality, Ellis concentrated on issues of feminism and eugenics—problems he thought were interlinked. In this paper, I integrate his ideas about these subjects, and consider the (...) ways in which Ellis and other liberal social reformers created a ‘eugenic subject’ in order to frame their arguments about social problems. (shrink)

El propósito de este trabajo es llevar a cabo una lectura minuciosa de la relación entre la problematización foucaulteana del saber y su propuesta de elaborar una crítica política de las ciencias humanas. Por lo tanto, pondremos el foco de nuestra lectura en diferentes libros, lecciones y artículos que el filósofo francés le dedicara a dicha cuestión.

El propósito de este trabajo es analizar la crítica foucaultianade la gubernamentalidad liberal como marco de racionalidad de la biopolítica. Particularmente, colocaremos el foco de la lectura en la problematización que Foucault despliega respecto de la formación de la economía política en tanto saber estratégico de la racionalidad liberal. Por ello, en el primer apartado, nos detendremos en la grilla de la gubernamentalidad como herramienta que la permite a Foucault elaborar una arqueo-genealogía de las formas de objetivación. Luego, dirigiremos la (...) lectura hacia la arqueo-genealogía de las formas de objetivación inmanentes a la constitución del discurso de la economía política en tanto saber estratégico de la gubernamentalidad liberal. (shrink)