Joaquín M. Fuster is an eminent cognitive neuroscientist whose research over the last five decades has made fundamental contributions to our understanding of the neural structures underlying cognition and behaviour. This book provides his view on the eternal question of whether we have free will. Based on his seminal work on the functions of the prefrontal cortex in decision-making, planning, creativity, working memory, and language, Professor Fuster argues that the liberty or freedom to choose between alternatives is a function (...) of the cerebral cortex, under prefrontal control, in its reciprocal interaction with the environment. Freedom is therefore inseparable from that circular relationship. The Neuroscience of Freedom and Creativity is a fascinating inquiry into the cerebral foundation of our ability to choose between alternative actions and to freely lead creative plans to their goal. (shrink)

Because the full development of Internet this paper is old today. But in his time was an expression of disappointing about the cyber trends.

In order to fulfil their essential roles as the bearers of truth and the relata of logical relations, propositions must be public and shareable. That requirement has favoured Platonist and other nonmental views of them, despite the well-known problems of Platonism in general. Views that propositions are mental entities have correspondingly fallen out of favour, as they have difficulty in explaining how propositions could have shareable, objective properties. We revive a mentalist view of propositions, inspired by Artificial Intelligence work on (...) perceptual algorithms, which shows how perception causes persistent mental entities with shareable properties that allow them to fulfil the traditional roles of (one core kind of) propositions. The clustering algorithms implemented in perception produce outputs which are (implicit) atomic propositions in different minds. Coordination of them across minds proceeds by game-theoretic processes of communication. The account does not rely on any unexplained notions such as mental content, representation, or correspondence (although those notions are applicable in philosophical analysis of the result). (shrink)

On 18th century Kant found the Swedenborg's writings, and then wrote an aggressive refutation titled "The dream of a visionary". But Kant did not understand the Swedenborg experience and theories really. Because his rationalism he was unable to do that. This paper analyse the Kant's argumentation and shows its weak points and his inadequacy.

Unlike many prophets and visionaries Swedenborg was a thorough theoretical thinker. This paper comment his experiences and theoretical point of view about the space of the visions.

In this essay, I would like to look at two particular attempts of developing a preliminary question that paves the way for establishing a Filipino Philosophy: viz. Rolando Gripaldo’s Historian of Philosophy approach and Napoleon Mabaquiao’s Strict Discipline approach. The former envisages that the first question that needs to be considered in the discussion of Filipino Philosophy must be taken from the perspective of a scholar of the history of philosophy. The latter’s procedure is to take what academic philosophers deem (...) to be the characterization of their discipline. In effect, while the former’s question is a question of a historian of philosophy; the latter’s question is a question of a philosopher. As this essay progresses I will try to make a critical assessment of the two attempts by first showing the strengths and weaknesses of their respective attempts, and secondly by stressing that their attempts, whether successful or not, should already be taken as contributions to the effort of establishing a Filipino Philosophy. (shrink)

In this paper, I offer a reconstruction of Wittgenstein's view of the happy life by sketching out three interconnected themes in his early works. The first theme is the distinction between a science of ethics and the ethical. The second is the idea of the willing subject. And finally, the third is the possibility of the happy life.

This book introduces profound reflections of Xavier Zubiri on the history of philosophy to English-speaking audiences. The book discusses the transcendental in Western philosophy and how a firm grasp of it reveals underlying unity, but also fundamental problems that Zubiri believed require a complete rethinking of certain theories.

Bayesianism has been dubbed as the most adequate and successful theory of scientific rationality. Its success mainly lies in its ability to combine two mutually exclusive elements involved in the process of theory-selection in science, viz.: the subjective and objective elements. My aim in this paper is to explain and evaluate Bayesianism’s account of scientific rationality by contrasting it with two other accounts.

"De la enseñanza teológica en España" es uno de los artículos de Laverde en su libro de ensayos publicado en 1868. En él defiende la recuperación de la Teología española y el pase de esos estudios a los Seminarios diocesanos. Novedosa, en este sentido, es la sugerencia de creación de un "gran Seminario Normal" nacional precedente de las Universidades Eclesiásticas.

A partir de la noción grassiana de humanismo y del renovador concepto de éste, el autor propone una diferenciada visión de los "distintos" humanismos, así como del papel desempeñado por Vico en esta tradición.Through Grassi's innovator idea of humanism, the author proposes a distinguished vision of the "different" humanisms, as well as of the role accomplished by Vico in this tradition.

This paper focuses on two interrelated issues about the prospects for research projects in experimental philosophical logic. The first issue is about the role that logic plays in such projects; the second involves the role that experimental results from the cognitive sciences play in them. I argue that some notion of logic plays a crucial role in these research projects, and, in turn, the results of these projects might inform substantive debates in the philosophy of logic.

Emancipación contra natura. La crítica ecológica a la teoría marxiana de la alienación.

This book is a translation of Zubiri's lectures, published posthumously and partially edited by Zubiri for publication. This translation was made possible by a grant from the Spanish Ministry of Culture and is the product of three experts in the thought of Zubiri.

La preocupación por la tierra ocupa actualmente las agendas políticas y culturales de los gobiernos, de las empresas, de los medios de comunicación, de las organizaciones sociales y de las iglesias, a causa de la evolución del clima, la contaminación del aire y del agua, la destrucción de la capa de ozono, el deterioro de los sistemas biológicos, el efecto invernadero, el aumento de inundaciones y el deshielo de los polos. La Conferencia episcopal canadiense habla del "imperativo ecológico cristiano" (2003, (...) 2008). (shrink)

Aún a falta de la imprescindible perspectiva temporal, se presentan aquí (1) una tesis sobre el movimiento 15M en su fase inicial de las acampadas: su discurso político en su fase de emergencia es un republicanismo cívico democrático de marca blanca sin referencias teóricas o filosóficas; y (2) varias hipótesis: se trata de un fenómeno político en sentido fuerte, producto del civismo bienestarista, sin conexión con movimientos sociales alternativos y sus ideologías, con una concepción novedosa de sí mismo como sujeto, (...) y que desafía el papel de los cuerpos intermedios en el ámbito de la sociedad civil, desde partidos hasta movimientos sociales. (shrink)

This paper reports the policy-responses of different Philippine higher education institutions (HEIs) to the novel coronavirus, COVD-19 pandemic. It compares these responses with those made by HEIs in Indonesia, Thailand, and Vietnam. Publicly available data and news reports were used to gauge the general public’s reaction to these policies and how the Philippines’ responses fare with its Southeast Asian neighbors. The paper observes that despite the innovations made by Philippine HEIs in terms of alternative learning modes and technologies for delivering (...) education, there are still gaps and challenges in their responses. It recommends that policy-responses and learning innovations should be grounded on a deeper understanding of distance education and should be sensitive to the call of the times. (shrink)

Por estas fechas, hace veinte años, se reunía en la sala de consejos de esta Universidad un grupo numeroso de filósofos, miembros de la Academia de Historia, de la Academia de la Lengua y del Instituto Caro y Cuervo, con el fin de determinar el pensum de la Facultad de Filosofía que se pretendía fundar. Entre los presentes se hallaba un extranjero. En las últimas sesiones, cuando ya la programación de las materias y los contenidos generales de las mismas estaban (...) casi totalmente configurados, el extranjero anotó la ausencia de una materia o de un capítulo extenso dentro de la historia de la filosofía que se denominara_ Historia de la Filosofía Colombiana_ o _Historia de la Filosofía en Colombia_ o algo similar, e insistió en que se llenara ese vacío. Al fin de las deliberaciones la propuesta fue rechazada porque prevaleció la tesis de que en Colombia nunca se había cultivado la filosofía de una forma tal que mereciera el esfuerzo de su estudio y recuperación. (shrink)