The acquisition and evolution of speech production, discourse and communication can be negatively impacted by brain malformations. We describe, for the first time, a case of developmental dynamic dysphasia (DDD) in a right-handed adolescent boy (subject D) with cortical malformations involving language-eloquent regions (inferior frontal gyrus) in both the left and the right hemispheres. Language evaluation revealed a markedly reduced verbal output affecting phonemic and semantic fluency, phrase and sentence generation and verbal communication in everyday life. Auditory comprehension, repetition, naming, (...) reading and spelling were relatively preserved, but executive function was impaired. Multimodal neuroimaging showed a malformed cerebral cortex with atypical configuration and placement of white matter tracts bilaterally and abnormal callosal fibers. Dichotic listening showed right hemisphere dominance for language and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) additionally revealed dissociated hemispheric language representation with right frontal activation for phonology and bilateral dominance for semantic processing. Moreover, subject D also had congenital mirror movements (CMM), defined as involuntary movements of one side of the body that mirror intentional movements of the other side. Transcranial magnetic stimulation and fMRI during voluntary unimanual (left and right) hand movements showed bilateral motor cortex recruitment and tractography revealed a lack of decussation of bilateral corticospinal tracts. Genetic testing aimed to detect mutations that disrupt the development of commissural tracts correlating with CMM (e.g., Germline DCC mutations) was negative. Overall, our findings suggest that DDD in subject D resulted from the underdevelopment of the left inferior frontal gyrus with limited capacity for plastic reorganization by its homologous counterpart in the right hemisphere. Corpus callosum anomalies probably contributed to hinder interhemispheric connectivity necessary to compensate language and communication deficits after left frontal involvement. (shrink)

In this paper, I propose an account of self-knowledge for desires. According to this account, we form beliefs about our own desires on the basis of our grounds for those desires. First, I distinguish several types of desires and their corresponding grounds. Next, I make the case that we usually believe that we have a certain desire on the basis of our grounds for it. Then, I argue that a belief formed thus is epistemically privileged. Finally, I compare this account (...) to two other similar accounts of self-knowledge. (shrink)

The conceptualization of the notion of subjectivity within the Anthropocene finds in Rosi Braidotti’s posthumanism one of its most explicit and profuse modulations. This essay argues that Braidotti’s model powerfully accounts for the Anthropocene’s subjectivity by conceiving the “self” as a transversal multiplicity and its relationality to the “others” and the “world” as non-hierarchized by nature–culture distinctions; however, by being ontologically grounded on a neo-Spinozistic monism, Braidotti’s model blurs the notions of finitude, agency, and change, obscuring the possibility of critical (...) dissent while decreasing the overall theory’s consistency. An alternative ontological model capitalizing on these elements can be found in Object-Oriented Ontology and its notion of withdrawal. By associating OOO’s non-onto-taxonomical pluralism with Braidotti’s posthuman subjectivity, this essay aims at ontologically discretizing the latter in order to overcome these limitations. Grounded on this association and invoking a narrative imaginary propelled by the Greek terms xenos and xenia, the article paves the way for a form of subjectivity deviating from Braidotti’s ecological model and defined as xenological, arguing that, within the context of the Anthropocene, it constitutes an adequate alternative to Braidotti’s subjectivity. (shrink)

The ontological abyss that separates real objects from sensual objects is one of the central principles of Object-Oriented Ontology (OOO), which has its most explicit and profuse modulation in Timothy Morton’s notion of rift. This article argues that, despite succeeding in explaining the radical difference that inhabits every object, Morton’s rift fails to explain the object’s unification, rendering the overall theory inconsistent. An alternative approach that accounts simultaneously for disjunction and conjunction between essences and appearances can be found in Eugenio (...) Trías’s philosophy of the limit, a term widely ignored in OOO despite its deeply non-relational conception of the reality of things. The article further argues that the reinterpretation of Trías’s twofold liminal approach in light of OOO successfully addresses the inconsistencies found in Morton’s rift, paving the way for a theory of limits within Harman’s ontological framework. (shrink)

Algunas formulaciones de la filosofía política reciente han descuidado el carácter históricamente indexado de conceptos como libertad política, propiedad o soberanía, propiciando un uso anacrónico e impreciso de su significado. No obstante, su posición académica y social dominante informa el «sentido común» filosófico- político de nuestra época. Locke constituye un ejemplo de cómo la coyuntura interpretativa liberal, que se desplegó en el siglo XIX y se consolidó en el XX, ha oscurecido una parte de la complejidad y pluralidad de las (...) tradiciones intelectuales y normativas que heredó. La reconstrucción de la filosofía política lockeana a partir de su concepción fiduciaria de la libertad política contribuye a hacer de nuevo visible el significado de algunas concepciones fundamentales para la teorización normativa presente. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Rhizomata Jahrgang: 5 Heft: 2 Seiten: 148-176.

This paper provides a comprehensive exploration of the transformative role of generative AI models, specifically Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) and Variational Autoencoders (VAEs), in the realm of medical diagnosis. Drawing from the philosophy of medicine and epidemiology, the paper examines the technical, ethical, and philosophical dimensions of integrating generative models into healthcare. A case study featuring Emily underscores the pivotal support generative AI can offer in complex medical diagnoses. The discussion extends to the application of GANs and VAEs in medical (...) imaging, emphasizing their potential in improving diagnostics, treatment planning, and medical research. The paper further delves into challenges and controversies, addressing issues of anatomical accuracy, biases in training data, interpretability of AI-generated medical images, and ethical considerations, for example, the phenomenon of "Dr. Google" and its implications for self-diagnosis, particularly in the context of the increasing role of generative AI models in healthcare. The concluding section emphasizes the need for health literacy, responsible use of online information, and collaborative decision-making between patients and healthcare providers. We advocate for interdisciplinary collaborations to establish ethical guidelines and ensure responsible AI use in healthcare. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to defend the view that judgments based on episodic memory are immune to error through misidentification. I will put forward a proposal about the contents of episodic memories according to which a memory represents a perception of a past event. I will also offer a proposal about the contents of perceptual experiences according to which a perceptual experience represents some relations that its subject bears to events in the external world. The combination of the (...) two views will yield the outcome that the subject is always an intentional object of her own memories: In episodic memory, one remembers being the subject whose extrinsic properties were experienced in some past perception. For that reason, one cannot misidentify oneself in memory unless one is having an inaccurate memory. Thus, the source of immunity to error through misidentification in memory lies in the nature of mnemonic content. (shrink)

El sentido de este artículo es el de mostrar, mediante del análisis de la obra principal de F. M. Marzoa, cómo incluso a través de los autores que con mayor rigor enfrentan la lectura de la obra de Marx, se filtra, de diversos modos, parte del material conceptual alienado que constituye la ideología, así como versiones tópicas de determinadas desviaciones del pensamiento marxiano. Lo que vale para Martínez Marzoa (quien, a juicio del autor del presente artículo, es uno de los (...) mejores intérpretes de Marx) vale, también, para Althusser, en parte para la “escuela de Frankfurt” y otras corrientes postmodernas. (shrink)

This interdisciplinary volume gathers selected, refereed contributions on various aspects of public health from several disciplines and research fields, including the philosophy of science, epidemiology, statistics and ethics. The contributions were originally presented at the 1st Barcelona conference of “Philosophy of Public Health”. This book is intended for researchers interested in public health and the contemporary debates surrounding it.

In the educational sphere, the concept of democracy is used in many and varied ways, though the hegemonic school culture often starts from a concept of democracy that is taken for granted, and it is understood that the entire educational community shares a similar concept. As a result of the research project “Democracy, participation and inclusive education in schools” we realized that the above-mentioned concept is used without being accurately defined in the school setting. This observation is what has prompted (...) us to write this article, basically structured in two parts. In the first part, based on the theoretical debate occurring in the field of social sciences, we delimit the concept of democracy and structure it in four basic dimensions: governance, inhabitance, otherness and ethos. In the second part, we specify and examine in depth these four dimensions in the school setting in order to construct a broad and transversal, yet specific, definition, with which to be able to develop ambitious democratic projects and, in turn, contribute to scientific debate. (shrink)

Il est des moments dans la vie d'un concept où l'explication (le passage de l'implicite à l'explicite), s'impose. Les auteurs de cet ouvrage ont noué des liens avec la pensée du politique, et leur examen porte donc sur ce qu'ils ont convenu d'appeler la rénovation de la pensée de la fraternité. Les auteurs proposent ici une expérimentation qui consiste à lire la fraternité en se débarrassant de l'idéologie du progrès et en faisant le pari que la fraternité dans sa constellation (...) première a encore bien des choses à nous apprendre. (shrink)

Déconstruire les thèses révisionnistes et réactionnaires du postmodernisme en utilisant leurs armes théoriques. Si ces thèses s'imposent par une gestion performante des simulacres, Vidal leur oppose un contre-simulacre qui cherche à ruiner durablement l'idéologie constitutive du postmodernisme.

En esta investigación se muestra cómo la persistencia de una concepción jurídica diática de la propiedad ha invisibilizado el carácter hist´rocio, social y político de la misma, naturalizando la desigualdad resultante. Se realiza un examen de cómo el realismo jurídico y la concepción de la propiedad como "haces de derechos" contribuyó a resignificarla como realidad históricamente contingente, sujeta a condiciones e intereses económicos, sociales y políticos. Finalmente, en el artículo se discute cómo la cristalización de los "haces de derechos" en (...) la conceptualización y regimentación de los bienes comunes puede constituir una promisoria herramienta -analítica y normativa- para la democratización de la propiedad en el mundo contemporáneo. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is twofold. Firstly, it analyses the similarities that stem from Wittgenstein’s (Philosophical Investigations (1953)) and Brandom’s (Making it Explicit (1994)) commitment to pragmatics in the philosophy of language to account for moral utterances. That is, the study of the meaning of moral utterances is carried out resorting to the study of the acts being performed in producing or exhibiting these utterances. Both authors offer, therefore, a pragmatic solution in order to account for the meaning of (...) our moral vocabulary and discursive practices. Secondly, it argues that both approaches lead to differing understandings of the role of “truth” and “falsity” in moral discourse. On the one hand, Wittgenstein’s remarks on ethics demonstrate a dismissive attitude towards the notions of truth and falsity in moral discourse. On the other hand, Brandom seems to be committed to a weak version of moral cognitivism: he takes assertions (which express beliefs, i.e. doxastic commitments) as the fundamental linguistic activity in the game of giving and asking for reasons and provides an anaphoric theory of truth to account for “truth” and “falsity” in our discourse. Additionally, it analyses how these differences bear on the Frege–Geach problem. (shrink)

In this paper I examine the notion and role of metaphors and illustrations in Maxwell's works in exact science as a pathway into a broader and richer philosophical conception of a scientist and scientific practice. While some of these notions and methods are still at work in current scientific research-from economics and biology to quantum computation and quantum field theory-, here I have chosen to attest to their entrenchment and complexity in actual science by attempting to make some conceptual sense (...) of Maxwell's own usage; this endeavour includes situating Maxwell's conceptions and applications in his own culture of Victorian science and philosophy. I trace Maxwell's notions to the formulation of the problem of understanding, or interpreting, abstract representations such as potential functions and Lagrangian equations. I articulate the solution in terms of abstract-concrete relations, where the concrete, in tune with Victorian British psychology and engineering, includes the muscular as well as the pictorial. This sets the basis for a conception of understanding in terms of unification and concrete modelling, or representation. I examine the relation of illustration to analogies and metaphors on which this account rests. Lastly, I stress and explain the importance of context-dependence, its consequences for realism-instrumentalism debates, and Maxwell's own emphasis on method. (shrink)

In jurisprudential literature, the adjective ‘defeasible’ appears as a predicate of many terms: concepts, laws, rules, reasoning, justification, proof, and so on. In this paper, we analyze the effects of some versions of the thesis of the defeasibility of legal norms on the reconstruction of the notion of legal validity. We analyze some possible justifications of this thesis considered as a claim concerning validity, and enquire into two possible sets of problems related to the defeasibility of the criteria of identification (...) of a legal system. We also provide a formalization of some options regarding defeasible criteria of identification, which can be used as a tool for meta-jurisprudential analysis. Finally, the thesis according to which defeasibility is better conceived of as a feature of legal application is examined and questioned. (shrink)

El presente artículo investiga de qué forma la centralidad del sufrimiento en la filosofía de Schopenhauer sirve para fundamentar su pesimismo. Tres son los argumentos analizados: el lugar del sufrimiento en el mundo, su lugar en la conciencia humana y su lugar frente a la felicidad. A la luz de estos tres argumentos, se destaca que el vínculo indisoluble entre el sufrimiento y la esencia del mundo, la determinación del sufrimiento en la conciencia, tanto en su génesis como en su (...) intensidad, y su anterioridad ontológica frente a la felicidad hacen del pesimismo una categoría necesaria. Finalmente, se señala una posible contribución del pesimismo schopenhaueriano a la crítica social contemporánea, considerando la idea de mundo que el capitalismo tardío promueve. (shrink)

The ’microcausality’ condition in quantum field theory is typically presented and justified on the basis of general principles of physical causality. I explore in detail a number of alternative causal interpretations of this condition. I conclude that none is fully satisfactory, independent of further and controversial assumptions about the object and scope of quantum field theories. In particular the stronger causalreadings require a fully reductionist and fundamentalist attitude to quantum field theory. I argue, in a deflationary spirit, for a reading (...) of the ‘microcausality’ condition as merely a boundary condition, inspired by Relativity, that different possible formulations of quantum field theory must obey. (shrink)

Joan Maragall es representante del modernismo catalán, afín al simbolismo y al parnasianismo de Francia. En el poesía y vida van estrechamente ligados. Acentúa la dimensión ética y cultural de exigencia de fidelidad a la experiencia personal de sinceridad. Llega a la cuestión última sin dejar de profundizar la absoluta relación del sujeto con el mundo. Combina la profundidad unamuniana y la mundanidad orteguiana.

In this paper we obtain a finite Hilbert-style axiomatization of the implicationless fragment of the intuitionistic propositional calculus. As a consequence we obtain finite axiomatizations of all structural closure operators on the algebra of {–}-formulas containing this fragment.

Recent trends towards an e-Science offer us the opportunity to think about the specific epistemological changes created by computational empowerment in scientific practices. In fact, we can say that a computational epistemology exists that requires our attention. By ‘computational epistemology’ I mean the computational processes implied or required to achieve human knowledge. In that category we can include AI, supercomputers, expert systems, distributed computation, imaging technologies, virtual instruments, middleware, robotics, grids or databases. Although several authors talk about the extended mind (...) and computational extensions of the human body, most of these proposals don’t analyze the deep epistemological implications of computer empowerment in scientific practices. At the same time, we must identify the principal concept for e-Science: Information . Why should we think about a new epistemology for e-Science? Because several processes exist around scientific information that require a good epistemological model to be understood. (shrink)

Resumen: El artículo ofrece un replanteamiento del debate sobre la conveniencia de atribuir poderes probatorios al juez. Para ello, se sostiene, por un lado, que la respuesta para ese debate debe vincularse necesariamente al modelo de proceso y de juez que se pretenda implementar, así como a la necesidad de sostener el objetivo de averiguación de la verdad en el proceso judicial. Por otro lado, una respuesta adecuada al problema planteado requiere un análisis cuidadoso de los distintos poderes probatorios y (...) del reparto de los mismos entre el juez y las partes. Abstract: The paper analyzes the debate on the convenience of attributing evidential powers to the judge. Ii is argued, on the one hand, that any response for this debate depends necessarily upon 1) the features of two models to be implemented: the model of the judicial process and that of the judge; as well as upon 2) the need to assume the search for truth as the aim in every judicial process. On the other hand, a correct answer to the problem needs a careful analysis of the different -and differently distributed- evidential powers the judge and the parties have. (shrink)

This book offers a philosophical account of memory. Memory is remarkably interesting from a philosophical point of view. Our memories interact with mental states of other types in a characteristic way. They also have some associated feelings that other mental states lack. Our memories are special in terms of their representational capacity too, since we can have memories of objective events, and we can have memories of our own past experiences. Finally, our memories are epistemically special, in that beliefs formed (...) on the basis of our memories are protected from certain errors of misidentification and justified in a way which does not rely on any cognitive capacity other than memory. The aim of the book is to explain these features of memory. It proposes that memories have a particular functional role which involves past perceptual experiences and beliefs about the past and suggests that memories have a particular content as well; they represent themselves as having a certain causal origin. The book then accounts for the feelings associated with our memories as the experience of some of the things that our memories represent; things such as our own past experiences, or the fact the memories originate in those experiences. It also accounts for the special justification for belief afforded by our memories in terms of the content that memories have. The resulting picture is a unified account of several philosophically interesting aspects of memory. (shrink)

El presente texto pretende presentar dos propuestas de actualización de la crítica de la economía política marxiana: las de Moishe Postone y Robert Kurz. Sus planteamientos, gestados a partir de los años ochenta, ofrecen claves para superar las insuficiencias del marxismo tradicional y abren perspectivas fructíferas para actualizar la teoría crítica. Partiendo de una reinterpretación común de las categorías de Marx, ambos autores presentan sin embargo diagnósticos diferentes: mientras Postone incide en cómo el capitalismo origina (y bloquea) la posibilidad de (...) un nuevo orden social, Kurz señala que el capitalismo contemporáneo habría alcanzado su límite interno y entrado en una fase irreversible de declive y desintegración. (shrink)

The original version of the article missed to include an acknowledgments. The missing information is provided below.

Los códigos éticos humanos no son coherentes en su diseño ni tampoco tienen una distribución universal. Por lo tanto, la imposible universalidad ni completitud de los sistemas éticos para la inteligencia artificial (IA) es algo evidente que tan sólo fue apuntado someramente por el estudio reciente del MIT (Moral Machine). Al tener toda ética un matiz cultural inequívoco, y también incluir grados de interpretación en sus principios (como el derecho universal a la vivienda, evidente si bien ninguna institución vela por (...) su cumplimiento, algo que una máquina no entendería). Al mismo tiempo se produce un problema formal: un sistema de IA no siempre cuenta con suficientes datos ni tiempo óptimo para procesar una situación, por lo que un factor de azar ético debe tenerse en cuenta en el diseño de tales sistemas. (shrink)

My analysis of the military campaign carried out by the armies of the Upper Mesopotamian Kingdom in the lands of Qabra and Nurrugum centers on the different treatment allotted by the armies of Samsi-Addu and Išme-Dagan to the populations defeated during that campaign. While the inhabitants of Nineveh were captured and some even incorporated into the army of Išme-Dagan, the tribe of Ya’ilanum was annihilated. This drastic action was the result of deep-seated prejudices of the leaders of the Upper Mesopotamian (...) Kingdom against non-urban populations, who were frequently perceived as subhuman and dangerous beings meriting annihilation. (shrink)