Four distinguished authors have been brought together to produce this elegant study of a much-neglected figure. The book is divided into three sections: Neurath's biographical background and the economic and social context of his ideas; his theory of science; and the development of his role in debates on Marxist concepts of history and his own conception of science. Coinciding with the emerging serious interest in logical positivism, this timely publication will redress a current imbalance in the history and philosophy of (...) science. (shrink)

Vygotsky's legacy in education is enduring and prolific, influencing educational research and scholarship in areas as far ranging child development, language and literacy development, bilingual education, and learning disabilities to name but a few. In this accessible, introductory volume, renowned Vygtosky authority Luis C. Moll presents a summary of Vygtoskian core concepts, constituting a cultural-historical approach to the study of thinking and development. Moll emphasizes what he considers central tenets of Vygotsky's scholarship --- the sociocultural genesis of human (...) thinking, the consideration of active and dynamic individuals, a developmental approach to studying human thinking, and the power of cultural mediation in understanding and transforming educational practices, broadly considered. After an introduction to Vygotsky's life, the historical context for his work, and his ideas, Moll provides examples from his educational research inspired by Vygotsky's work. With both critical scrutiny of current interpretations of Vygotksian theory and clear deference for the theorist known as "The Mozart of Psychology," Moll stresses the many ways Vygotksy's theory can offer a theory of possibilities for positive pedagogical change. (shrink)

In this essay, I argue that exploring institutional racism also needs to examine interactions and communications between patients and providers. Exchange between bioethicists, social scientists, and life scientists should emphasize the biological effects—made evident through health disparities—of racism. I discuss this through examples of patient–provider communication in fertility clinics in South Africa and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic to emphasize the issue of mistrust between patients and medical institutions. Health disparities and medical mistrust are interrelated problems of racism in healthcare provision.

This paper examines a novel notion of causality, namely, fuzzy-set-theoretic causality. Over the last decade, a number of conceptual models of causality, in the language of fuzzy-set theory, have appeared in the scientific literature and have been applied to empirical research. They have circulated widely from one scientific discipline to another, weaving a unifying thread through them. However, they have received no philosophical attention. In this paper, I will discuss the value and limitations of this type of model and will (...) read into its application several dimensions of philosophical significance. (shrink)

Joint attention is an early-emerging and uniquely human capacity that lies at the foundation of many other capacities of humans, such as language and the understanding of other minds. In this article, I summarize what developmentalists and philosophers have come to find out about joint attention, and I end by stating that two problems or questions of joint attention require additional research: 1) the relation between joint attention and the skills for dyadic sharing or affect exchange in young infants, and (...) 2) the evolution of joint attention. (shrink)

This study examined 4-year-olds’ problem-solving under different social conditions. Children had to use water in order to extract a buoyant object from a narrow tube. When faced with the problem ‘cold’ without cues, nearly all children were unsuccessful. But when a solution-suggesting video was pedagogically delivered prior to the task, most children succeeded. Showing children the same video in a non-pedagogical manner did not lift their performance above baseline and was less effective than framing it pedagogically. The findings support ideas (...) central to natural pedagogy, 148–153, 2009). They also challenge the Cultural Intelligence hypothesis, according to which only humans’ social, but not their physical, cognition differs qualitatively from that of great apes. A more radical, transformative variant of the Cultural Intelligence hypothesis is suggested according to which humans’ physical cognition is shaped by their social nature and must therefore be recognized as equally distinctive as their social cognition. (shrink)

The purpose of this essay is to determine how we should construe the content of memories. First, I distinguish two features of memory that a construal of mnemic content should respect. These are the ‘attribution of pastness’ feature (a subject is inclined to believe of those events that she remembers that they happened in the past) and the ‘attribution of existence’ feature (a subject is inclined to believe that she existed at the time that those events that she remembers took (...) place). Next, I distinguish two kinds of theories of memory, which I call ‘perceptual’ and ‘self-based’ theories. I argue that those theories that belong to the first kind but not the second one have trouble accommodating the attribution of existence. And theories that belong to the second kind but not the first one leave the attribution of pastness unexplained. I then discuss two different theories that are both perceptual and self-based, which I eventually reject. Finally, I propose a perceptual, self-based theory that can account for both the attribution of pastness and the attribution of past existence. (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)

Sometimes, one can imagine, in virtue of having some experience, that one is someone else having some property. This is puzzling if imagination is a guide to possibility, since it seems impossible for one to be someone else. In this paper, I offer a way of dissolving the puzzle. When one claims that, by having some experience, one imagines that one is someone else having some property, what one imagines, I suggest, is that if the other person had the property (...) in question, then having it would be, for them, like having the relevant experience is for one. I discuss two alternative views about the content of these episodes of imagination, and argue that both of them are too weak and too strong. The proposed view avoids the two difficulties while preserving some intuitions about the phenomenology and the epistemology of imagination which are captured by the alternative views. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the possible implications of Peirce's categories for a project of a community. In order to do so, I will start by analysing the first formulation of these categories in Peirce's early writings, and then I will compare them with their later formulations. Thus, we will see some their most important characteristics, namely, their universality and their dynamism, which will allow for a particular understanding of the role that logic can play in his (...) system, in a theory of scientific inquiry and, finally, in a community in general. (shrink)

The aims of this study were to analyze the peak physical demands in elite futsal by quantifying the most demanding scenarios of match play and to identify the differences between playing positions and the seasonal trend for five different rolling average time windows. The most demanding scenarios of external load from distance, speed, acceleration, and deceleration variables were obtained from 14 elite futsal players using a local positioning system during 15 official matches in the premier Spanish Futsal League. The results (...) showed an extremely large effect of the time window for all dependent variables in all positional groups. Another important finding of this study was that, in regard to the seasonal trend, only defenders reported clear moderate-large positive trends for high-speed running efforts, high-acceleration efforts, and high-deceleration efforts. Finally, moderate-large individual differences in player means for all dependent variables and clear differences between games for most dependent variables were found, suggesting how likely contextual factors may exert an influence on how “demanding” the most demanding scenarios are. The findings of this study provide coaches and strength and conditioning coaches further knowledge of the peak physical demands in elite futsal competition. This valuable information may lead to a more precise position-specific training prescription. (shrink)

A partir de los Analectas, el texto más próximo al pensamiento originario de Confucio, y empleando los otros tres libros del canon clásico del confucianismo, el presente trabajo buscar analizar cuál es la importancia que los rituales, como fórmula paradigmática de las pautas sociales, tienen en la filosofía de Confucio, en relación con su sistema ético, político y cosmológico. Después, establece una semblanza de la estructura que tenían los rituales en la China confuciana. Finalmente, se contrapone la relación de la (...) Escuela confuciana con los rituales con la secularización de la democracia actual. (shrink)

In this article, we postulate that belief understanding unfolds in two steps over ontogenetic time. We propose that belief understanding begins in interactive scenarios in which infants and toddlers respond directly and second-personally to the actions of a misinformed agent. This early understanding of beliefs is practical and grounded in the capacity for perspective-taking. Practical belief understanding guarantees effective interaction and communication with others who are acting on false assumptions. In a second step, children, at preschool age, acquire the capacity (...) to reflect on and arrive at third-personal judgments about a misinformed agent’s perspective. This capacity is theoretical and grounded in the ability to “confront” perspectives. It allows children to understand that beliefs can misrepresent the state of the world and to predict what (past, future, or hypothetical) actions follow from these beliefs. We conclude with ideas on how practical perspective-taking develops into theoretical perspective-confronting in early ontogeny. (shrink)

Although most consumers are positive about socially responsible companies, in order to benefit from CSR efforts, effective and clear CSR communication is important. However, due to the constantly rising profusion of eco-labels, based on either own claims from the organization or claims made by an external third party, consumers may encounter difficulties in identifying truly responsible firms, which could result in less effective CSR initiatives, even for those responsible firms. Therefore, building on attribution theory, this study seeks to identify how (...) uncertified internal CSR claims and external third-party CSR labels should be used in order to deter greenwashing and increase positive consumer evaluations. Within a 3 × 2 design, respondents are exposed to different coffee product packages measuring their attitude toward the brand, corporate credibility, purchase intention, and scent perception, as well as perceived attributional CSR motives. Overall, findings indicate that especially an external CSR label affects consumer responses toward the firm. Moreover, perceived CSR motives serve as a mediator between an external CSR label and corporate credibility and brand attitude, respectively. These findings warrant further consideration of introducing an external multilevel rating systems by governmental law. (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)

In this paper I offer a novel interpretation of Wittgenstein's claim that ‘ethics is transcendental’. Initially, I set out to offer said interpretation by resorting to both Wittgenstein's understanding of ethics and his understanding of the transcendentality of logic—which entails taking Wittgenstein as endorsing a Kantian understanding of the notion ‘transcendental’. This leads to the claim that ethics is transcendental insofar as it is the condition of a certain ethical experience. Nevertheless, this interpretation involves some inadequacies due to certain incompatibilities (...) between the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and the aforementioned Kantian understanding of the notion ‘transcendental’. I identify the peculiarities of Wittgenstein's understanding of the notion ‘transcendental’, and on this basis, I set forth a novel interpretation of 6.421. Specifically, I argue that ethics is transcendental insofar as it is internal to or constitutive of a certain mystical view: viewing the world sub specie aeterni as something valuable. (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)

Base-of-the-pyramid business models aim to achieve profitability and poverty reduction by including poor people into corporate value chains. This goal duality creates tensions. Actors’ responses to these tensions are influenced by their cognitive frames of the phenomena building the tension. Applying a cognitive perspective, I investigate how corporate actors with different frames of poverty respond proactively or defensively to the poverty–profitability tension by adapting business model elements. I find that proactive and defensive responses differ for actors holding different cognitive frames (...) of poverty. The responses have consequences for the poverty impact potential of BOP business models. (shrink)

Problema: tradicionalmente se ha excluido de la esfera de consideración moral tanto al ambiente como a otros animales, aun cuando una relación positiva con ellos reporta beneficios para la salud de unas y otras criaturas y promueve el desarrollo de empatía y la emisión de conductas prosociales (Ngai, Yu, Chau, Lee y Wong, 2021). De hecho, en las últimas décadas se han observado casos de zoonosis, uso inadecuado de recursos, deterioro del ambiente y un aumento de casos registrados de abuso (...) animal. El abuso animal, fenómeno complejo y multideterminado, frecuentemente funciona como precursor o indicador de otras conductas calificadas como “antisociales”, violentas y no violentas. Respecto del rol que juega la empatía en la emisión o inhibición de conductas agresivas y de cuán generalizable es la empatía interespecie, existe evidencia contradictoria y se resaltan aquí tres fenómenos de interés: erosión empática, desensibilización progresiva a la violencia y fatiga por compasión. Objetivo: determinar si los niveles de empatía, la disposición a comportarse de manera abusiva contra otros animales y la conducta efectiva de abuso animal se relacionan con el contexto de formación preprofesional, el género autopercibido y la tenencia actual y/o previa de animales de compañía en estudiantes universitarios que cursan el tramo final de la Licenciatura en Psicología. Metodología: diseño ex post facto retrospectivo de grupo único (N = 241). Se aplicó un cuestionario autoadministrado que incluyó el Interpersonal Reactivity Index, la Animal Empathy Scale, la Animal Abuse Proclivity Scale y la cantidad y frecuencia de conductas efectivas de abuso animal. Contribución: se evidencia sobre el aporte del género autopercibido a la relación entre diversas medidas de empatía y el abuso hacia otros animales y se refuerza la tesis de la no generalizabilidad de la empatía interespecie. (shrink)

Osiurak and Reynaud argue that cumulative technological culture is made possible by a “non-social cognitive structure” and they offer an account that aims “to escape from the social dimension” of human cognition. We challenge their position by arguing that human technical rationality is unintelligible outside of our species' uniquely social form of life, which is defined by shared intentionality :319–37; Tomasello 2019a, Becoming human: A theory of ontogeny. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press).

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)

Recent research on autonoetic consciousness indicates that the ability to remember the past and the ability to project oneself into the future are closely related. The purpose of the present study was to confirm this proposition by examining whether the relationship observed between personality and episodic memory could be extended to episodic future thinking and, more generally, to investigate the influence of personality traits on self-information processing in the past and in the future. Results show that Neuroticism and Harm Avoidance (...) predict more negative past memories and future projections. Other personality dimensions exhibit a more limited influence on mental time travel . Therefore, our study provide an additional evidence to the idea that MTT into the past and into the future rely on a common set of processes by which past experiences are used to envision the future. (shrink)

The purpose of this chapter is to determine what is to remember something, as opposed to imagining it, perceiving it, or introspecting it. What does it take for a mental state to qualify as remembering, or having a memory of, something? The main issue to be addressed is therefore a metaphysical one. It is the issue of determining which features those mental states which qualify as memories typically enjoy, and those states which do not qualify as such typically lack. In (...) sections 2 and 3, I will discuss the two main existing conceptions of the conditions that a mental state must satisfy to count as an episode of remembering. The first of these approaches is backward-looking. It puts forward conditions that strictly concern the aetiology of the mental state. I will argue that the conditions offered by the backward-looking approach are both too strong and too weak: They rule out mental states which, intuitively, count as memories while including mental states which, intuitively, do not qualify as memories. The second approach is forward-looking. It puts forward conditions that only concern the use that the subject makes of the mental state while forming beliefs about their own life. I will argue that the conditions proposed by the forward-looking approach are both too weak and too strong as well. However, the discussion of the two approaches will allow us to extract some helpful lessons on the constraints that any proposal about the nature of remembering should respect. An alternative approach aimed at incorporating those lessons will be offered in section 4 by drawing on the literature on functionalism. In section 5, I will argue that this approach can, on the one hand, accommodate as memories those mental states which indicate that the backward-looking approach and the forward-looking approach are too strict while, on the other hand, excluding those mental states which suggest that the two alternative approaches are too permissive. Accordingly, I will conclude that construing memory along functionalist lines is a satisfactory approach to the nature of remembering. (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)

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.

Memories are mental states with a number of interesting features. One of those features seems to be their having an intentional object. After all, we commonly say that memories are about things, and that a subject represents the world in a certain way by virtue of remembering something. It is unclear, however, what sorts of entities constitute the intentional objects of memory. In particular, it is not clear whether those are mind-independent entities in the world or whether they are mental (...) entities of some kind. The purpose of this chapter is to map the different positions on this issue, and to highlight the virtues and difficulties for each of the options. In Section 2, I will specify the question of what the intentional objects of memory are by clarifying the relevant notions of memory and intentional object. In Section 3, I will motivate the significance of identifying the intentional objects of memory by exploring the relations between, on the one hand, the intentionality of memory and, on the other hand, the phenomenology and the epistemology of memory. In Section 4, I will consider two natural candidates for being the intentional objects of memory, namely, worldly entities and mental entities, and I will raise some concerns for each of the two candidates. A promising alternative will emerge, in Section 5, as preserving the virtues of the two original candidates while avoiding their difficulties. The alternative will concern a certain combination of worldly and mental entities; a combination that involves both causal and truth-making relations. I will conclude by sketching how the alternative candidate can shed some light on the phenomenological and epistemological issues raised in the third section. (shrink)

Are those judgments that we make on the basis of our memories immune to error through misidentification? In this paper, I discuss a phenomenon which seems to suggest that they are not; the phenomenon of observer memory. I argue that observer memories fail to show that memory judgments are not IEM. However, the discussion of observer memories will reveal an interesting fact about the perspectivity of memory; a fact that puts us on the right path towards explaining why memory judgments (...) are indeed IEM. The main tenet in the account of IEM to be proposed is that this aspect of memory is grounded, on the one hand, on the intentionality of perception and, on the other hand, on the relation between the intentionality of perception and that of memory. (shrink)

If I remember something, I tend to believe that I have perceived it. Similarly, if I remember something, I tend to believe that it happened in the past. My aim here is to propose a notion of mnemonic contentaccounts for these facts. Certain proposals build perceptual experiences into the content of memories. I argue that they Have trouble with the second belief. Other proposals build references to temporal locations into mnemonic content. I argue that they have trouble with the second (...) one. I propose a notion of mnemonic Content that can account for the rationality of both beliefs. (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)

My purpose in this essay is to clarify the notion of explanation by computer simulation in artificial intelligence and cognitive science. My contention is that computer simulation may be understood as providing two different kinds of explanation, which makes the notion of explanation by computer simulation ambiguous. In order to show this, I shall draw a distinction between two possible ways of understanding the notion of simulation, depending on how one views the relation in which a computing system that performs (...) a cognitive task stands to the program that the system runs while performing that task. Next, I shall suggest that the kind of explanation that results from simulation is radically different in each case. In order to illustrate the difference, I will point out some prima facie methodological difficulties that need to be addressed in order to ensure that simulation plays a legitimate explanatory role in cognitive science, and I shall emphasize how those difficulties are very different depending on the notion of explanation involved. (shrink)